First Night: No glitz, no celebs, but subtexts galore: Arcadia

It would have been a West End producer's first night dream. Celebrated playwright's first full-length play for five years; his romantic partner the leading lady. A glitzy first night with after-show party and pictures all over the next day's papers a sinch. As one publicist said: 'It was a big production and I would have put on a big evening to reflect it, with a glamorous party.'

But this was the National Theatre, and taxpayers' money can't be spent on inviting Anneka Rice and the hordes of 'isn't-that-thingy-who-used-to-be-in-whatsitcalled' celebs that make up a West End first night audience. Nor can it be spent on hiring a nightclub. So Tom Stoppard's new one, Arcadia, played to an audience drawn from the NT's mailing list. As a National Theatre official explained: 'We simply don't have that sort of first night. As a publicly funded company we would be slaughtered if we spent money on a party. The cast go to a restaurant afterwards, but they have to pay for it themselves.'

Richard Eyre, the NT's artistic director, is a little sceptical about the institution of the first night anyway. 'What it means for us is simply that it is the point at which you arbitrarily stop work on the show. You're rehearsing right up until then. It's the last throw of the dice and you're keyed up, but in truth there's not so much riding on the throw of the dice as you might think. I'm not cynical about the importance of the critics, but what really counts for the National is word-of-mouth recommendations.'

They should be forthcoming for Trevor Nunn's production with Felicity Kendal and the excellent Harriet Walter and Bill Nighy and newer talents, Emma Fielding and Rufus Sewell. Arcadia switches between 1809 and the present day and, like Stoppard's last stage play, explores scientific ideas, this time theories of chaos and thermodynamics, which serve as metaphors for conflicts between the romantic and the classical imagination.

The play centres on the accidental discovery in 1809 of the chaos theory by a precocious girl in a country house. The story is explored and echoed by the present day inhabitants of the same house.

The subtexts extended from the play into the auditorium. The National and its counterpart the Royal Shakespeare Company, never publicly admit to rivalry, at least not at the highest echelons. But rivalry there is; and each new production at the NT is watched to see if it might signal an end to one of the most successful runs since the sixties; an end that some of the guarded reviews to Eyre's own Macbeth earlier this month seemed to suggest. The decision to direct at the National by Trevor Nunn has raised eyebrows at the RSC, where he has only directed one play in the last eight years but remains artistic director emeritus.

And then there was the subtext that isn't; a newspaper story that Nunn's wife, the actress Imogen Stubbs, had fallen out with Eyre's wife, the TV producer Sue Birtwhistle, over Stubbs's new TV series, which Birtwhistle was, but no longer is, producing. Quite untrue, but it had the odd neck craning.

The National's architect, Sir Denys Lasdun, always intended that people collecting in the vast bar area should become part of the theatrical experience; and with enough to chatter about there, plus a challenging return by Stoppard, who needed a party?