We made our way down to the auditorium, where we had seats in the middle of the stalls, and as we squeezed past the people who had arrived before us, I had the strange sensation that I was, briefly, the centre of attention. It wasn’t true, of course. I doubt if many people had recognised me, but at the same time, I felt trapped. The theatre was going to be full tonight: almost seven hundred people on three levels. I could see them all around me, many of them in the shadows, diminished by the distance between us. They were no longer individuals. They were an audience … perhaps even a jury. My stomach was still churning. I felt like the condemned man.

And then I saw them: my real judges.

The critics.

They were scattered across the stalls, easily recognisable by their blank faces and, in some cases, the notebooks they were already balancing on their knees. Michael Billington from the Guardian, Henry Hitchings, the Standard, Libby Purves, The Times, Harriet Throsby, the Sunday Times, Dominic Cavendish, the Telegraph. Many of them were familiar to me from my time at the Old Vic, where I had recently joined the board. They had been deliberately placed apart from each other and seemed to be avoiding each other’s eyes. They weren’t exactly rivals but nor, I thought, were they friends. They sat alone.

Was I afraid of them?

Yes.

I have never worried about the critics who write about books and TV. They can be harsh, but it’s open to question how much influence they have over what people watch or read. And anyway, they can’t hurt me. They’re reviewing something I wrote a long time ago – in the case of a TV drama it could be years – and I’ve signed my next contract. I’m employed on a new project. They can tell the whole world I’m useless, but it’s already too late.

These critics were different. Here they were, some of them in the same row as me. Their reviews could, quite simply, shut us down. Sitting there with the curtain about to rise, I began to have second thoughts about what I’d written. Would they find that joke funny? What would they make of the attack on Nurse Plimpton at the end of the first act? Had it been a mistake, raising the question of Dr Farquhar’s sexuality? A moment ago, I had been worrying about the first-night audience. But they weren’t the ones that mattered, and anyway, they were on my side. Most of them had been given free tickets, for heaven’s sake! It was the critics who held my fate in their hands.

My wife touched my arm. ‘It’s starting late,’ she said.

I looked at my watch and my heart missed a couple of beats. She was right. Seven thirty-five. So what had happened? Had Tirian failed to turn up? Was somebody ill? I looked around me. So far so good. Nobody else seemed to have noticed. I waited, sweatily, for the play to begin.