So good you'll see it twice? Cathy Naden and Jerry Killick in Exquisite Pain. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Yesterday I met a guy who'd been to Boeing Boeing four times, which struck even an unrepentant theatre junkie like me as mildly obsessive. Of course, people should see a show as many times as will give them pleasure. Thing is, I find I don't often want to see the same production twice, let alone repeatedly. There are several reasons for this: it's often expensive; London is a cornucopia of theatre and there's always something new opening; and I go to an awful lot of plays, so if I saw everything I loved twice my personal life would wilt completely.
But there's a bigger rationale for my preferring, by and large, to see things only once. My friend Tim is adamant that you should only see Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street one time - or leave a really long gap between viewings at the very least - because the movie is about the ephemerality of theatre. He thinks "you can hold on to an especially poignant memory of it if you just let it work its magic that single time - let the actors step out into the night, as it were, never to come back." Which is exactly how I feel about brilliant theatre. It touches me, in part, because it's mortal: like us, it disappears too quickly, even as it provides proof that a fleeting experience can brand itself on the brain.
Inevitably, I break my own rule sometimes. I enjoy going to Scratch Nights and taking friends to see shows I know they'll flip for. And, every now and then, a production comes along I absolutely have to watch twice.
Next week I'm catching Forced Entertainment's chamber piece Exquisite Pain for the second time. Based on a text by the conceptual artist Sophie Calle, this was one of the most fascinating things I saw in 2005. A disquisition on how desire and pain repeat themselves, it was alluringly spare, yet as layered as a mille-feuille. I found myself wishing it was one of the company's 24-hour durational shows. I could have watched it all night.
Your turn: which productions have you seen again and again, and why?
