Stage Struck

You might as well skip to the end, writes PETER CRAWLEY

ACTUALLY, on second thoughts, do ruin it for me.

A few weeks ago, a psychological study determined that people enjoyed stories more if they knew the ending in advance. On TV, Stephen Colbert helped to spread the joyful news: “Rosebud is a sled, Bruce Willis is dead, Soylent Green is people and Darth Vadar is Luke Skywalker’s father.”

It seems counter-intuitive to anyone who has watched The Usual Suspects, read The Murder of Roger Ackroydor somehow made it the whole way through Metal Machine Music(Spoiler: Lou Reed did it). But, really, it's pretty much the norm in theatre, which didn't feature in the Psychological Science study, perhaps for obvious reasons.

"There is an art to the building up of suspense," begins Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead, just as the joke, title and concept kills the chance of keeping us in any. Indeed, if the scientists had sent one test group to Death of a Salesman,to what theatrical thriller do you send the control group – Waiting for Godot? That's plain mean.

Or perhaps you send them to Moll Flanders,the unusually coyly titled adaptation of Daniel Defoe's novel, whose full title is a masterclass in spoilers. (" Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia", etc. Now, who wouldn't want to see that?)

Theatre has rarely been hung up on the pay-off. Tragedy makes this more explicit. The ending is unavoidable. It’s how we get there that matters. Even the characters have a good idea of where they’re headed.

Take Oedipus, a stab-first- ask-for-ID-later kinda guy, wondering who on earth could have killed the last king and brought this curse on Thebes, despite the strong suspicions of an oracle, a seer and absolutely everyone watching.

Considering the poor sleuthing skills in Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain, one character reduces the condition to what Freud might call an Oedipus Simplex: "Do the fucking math!" But whether Romeo and Juliet's prologue blows the whole deal, or Hamlet's dumb show makes everything that follows seem like déjà vu, or whether Irish theatres busy themselves in familiar adaptations and endless revivals, there has to be a reason for an art form so inured to surprise.

When it comes to their artistic appreciation, the psychologists are less than persuasive. “Plots are just excuses for great writing,” concluded the study. “What the plot is is (almost) irrelevant.” Just the kind of conclusion you expect a psych wonk to reach.

Still, given the number of people who claim to have seen surprise endings coming "way off", not to mention doubts about how one scientifically measures enjoyment (do they submit endorphin samples?), I think I'll wait for further study before telling people that Lockhart is the Devil, Beth dies, the Government Inspector is not The Government Inspector, and that Godot never shows up.

Oops.