In a freak occurrence, a new play has sold out the Gate Theatre. For once it might have been the reviews

Seán McGinley and Marie Mullen in The Children, the first recently-written play to fill the Gate in years. Photo: Ros Kavanagh 

For the inexhaustible William Goldman, a screenwriter working in the U.S. film industry for 20 years, it was clear that no one had an explanation for why a screenplay fills theatres or empties them. In his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, he wrote: “Nobody knows anything”.

A similar mystery haunts theatre producers, especially those praying for returns on investment through ticket sales. Those box offices aren’t always transparent in Ireland. Elsewhere trade bodies such as the Broadway League and the Society of London Theatre release grosses to the public. Maniacs like me have to keep hawk-eyed and monitor sales through online bookings, which is never fully accurate. A half-full auditorium may fill up in the hours before a show. Seats that seem sold might actually be complimentary and given out to pack empty houses. 

Yet, with well-informed arguments we can make some guesses about box offices. If a three-week run of Asking for It fills the cavernous Abbey auditorium, long before the first preview, then it has likely reached the original profits projected by management. We can probably chalk it up as a box office hit. 

That success reveals something about box offices for big stages. Adaptations of well-known works can make serious money. Revivals of familiar plays such as The Plough and the Stars are also heavy hitters. New writing with no widely recognised source material, however, can flop. 

Not even thoughtfully honed lines by critics can disrupt these patterns. If they did, more people would have went to see On Rafferty’s Hill, an old drama about abuse given a prescient and devastating revival, than went to see The Snapper.

Yet, this weekend Lucy Kirkwood’s magnificent drama The Children has sold out the Gate Theatre. Reuniting three retired nuclear scientists outside the exclusion zone of a damaged power station, the recently-written play is the first of that ilk to fill the 271-seat theatre in years.

What we know for certain is that contemporary plays not based on books or films haven’t sold well on big stages. Past productions at the Gate such as The Mariner, The Father and Tribes all limped towards the end of their runs. The Children had some shaky nights but the fact that it will reach capacity this weekend is really a freak occurrence. 

Despite British playwright Kirkwood having great transnational success, her plays aren’t seen here and her profile is low. Similarly Oonagh Murphy, one of our best young directors, has a following that’s still growing.

The most recognisable faces are those of actors Marie Mullen and Seán McGinley, familiar by now to generations of theatregoers, giving sublime performances alongside the excellent Ger Ryan. Even then, Mullen and McGinley may help open a well-known production; in this age a new play seems to need a Cillian Murphy to sell tickets.

Who does that leave but the critics, battling irrelevance and having no regular influence, who could have, for once, made a difference here? They got the word out.

“A brightly disarming and deeply unsettling play,” wrote Peter Crawley in the Irish Times, beneath five stars. The Guardian’s Helen Meany wrote: “In these absorbing, sympathetic performances, the characters reveal themselves as complex and contradictory, as they question what they owe to the next generation”. In the Sunday Independent Emer O’Kelly dubbed it “contemporary theatre at its very best”. 

The thought that critics might actually matter is even more intriguing in a climate where other trends occasionally buckle. In 2015 the Gate’s artistic director Michael Colgan spoke of a sure-fire production of Romeo and Juliet, destined to suit the tastes of the theatre’s audience: “we’ll be paying for it for two years”. Just last year the Abbey’s indifferently-reviewed Ulysses returned for a second outing to find much of its audience depleted. 

Who knows why these plays with familiar source material played to poor houses? Or why readers are more likely to gaze at the accumulation of star ratings than the elegantly wrought phrases of critics?

Nobody. Nobody knows anything.