I wish I’d seen the first performance of....

Ohhh good thread, sat at Summer and Smoke the other week I thought 'well this is a Tenessee Williams' play so things are not going to go well', but to not have that expectation and everything to just unfold before you!
Plus lots of Shakespeare, Othello I think, I wonder when the feeling of doom would have stolen over me.

Jesus Christ Superstar at the Palace

The Tempest

The Master Builder (the English first night of course)

The Birthday Party and/or The Caretaker

Camelot (London or Broadway)

Jesus Christ Superstar

Les Miserables - Colm Wilkinson
Phantom - Michael Crawford/Sarah Brightman
Evita - Elaine Paige
Martin Guerre
Beauty and the Beast
Chess - Elaine Paige
Guys and Dolls - National
Guys and Dolls - Donmar/Piccadilly
Bombay Dreams
The Beautiful Game
Parade - Donmar

I try to avoid reading the theatre history of a programme, as I hear myself say “if only”.

Hamilton at the Public Theatre
Saturday Night Fever at the Palladium
Punchdrunk's The Drowned Man (although I heard it was a bit of a mess)

Definitely Shakespeare's Hamlet! It was a well-known tale but apparently earlier versions had a happy ending - just imagine the shock of the original audience at the end. I'm sure many wouldn't have liked it!

So many of Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies could go either way - compare Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet - that I often think it must have been amazing to go and see a brand-new Shakespeare play not knowing which you were going to get.

Hamilton at the Public - apparently people already kind of knew at that point that it was going to be amazing because there had been a prior concert version at the Lincoln Centre that created a lot of buzz for it, so maybe it's the Lincoln Centre gig I would really have loved to be at.

The National's Guys and Doll's - isn't that the legendary one where the audience demanded 3 encores of Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat?

Of course with some shows the first performance wasn't that great as they needed previews to work the kinks out, so you wouldn't want to have seen the first preview of something like War Horse.

I was there the next night and it ran smoothly, although there were plenty of changes after that. That sort of work is unusual in that the first performances are part of the creative process as the audience are so much part of the equation. I find it fascinating to follow but woe betide anyone who goes in previews and thinks that they have seen the final version of it.

It’s depressing seeing so many shows that I consider recent, I’d need something much more historical to make it interesting. I’ll go for 29th May 1913, The Rite of Spring first performance by the Ballets Russes in Paris. Famous, of course, for the absolute riot it caused.

Fair enough, then you’d really be wanting to see multiple previews, not just the first one! It is fascinating how shows develop and change.

What a great thread! Euripedes’s Medea for me. Apparently the play came last in the festival competition when it was presented so it would be interesting to also see the other plays.

I would like to have been at the first performance of the Rite of Spring in 1913 and, of course, the trouble that ensued.

I forgot Waiting for Godot. I wonder if I would have liked it on first viewing. What I mean is with no previous hype or knowledge of it. Obviously I saw it once for the first time. Waves of nostalgia....Did I ever mention that my OH was at the second performance of Rosencrantz and G at the Edinburgh Festival? I was v impressed to learn that. Like having a Ferrari, it was. 

That's what I was thinking too - just to see if it really was as shocking as people say.

Der Rosenkavalier, Dresden 1911
More generally, any baroque opera with castrato roles, to hear what those voices really sounded like.

I wish I had put money on this.

But I suppose I wouldn’t have got very good odds.