For my money, Sunday opening is the most exciting innovation in theatre-going since the birth of the National Theatre. If live performance is to stand a chance of capturing the hearts and minds of the next generation (and God knows it may be too late already) it has to keep pace with changing times. Yet until now working practices in theatre have remained stuck in an aspic that has changed little since Henry Irving was complaining about those bloody bells.

It’s now nearly 40 years since other forms of entertainment loosened their stays and started catering for modern tastes. On Sundays you can now go and watch sporting events, eat in restaurants, visit art galleries or the movies. You can even go to church (as long as you can actually get anywhere through the resultant traffic jams).

Yet if you wander around city centres you’re confronted by the forlorn and anachronistic spectacle of shuttered and desolate theatre fronts. Nothing could send out a clearer signal of an art form firmly past its sell-by date. Yet live theatre is undergoing a tremendous revival just now, which would be hugely encouraged by Sunday opening.

Many families these days have only Sunday in which to do something together, enjoying the kind of communal experience as only live theatre can bring.

And, if nothing else, it will at least help out the poor old tourist who is forced to trail round London Theatreland on Sunday looking for somewhere warm to shelter from the rain.

Many inside the business are wary of the potential erosion of hard-won working practices, and admittedly there are concerns for actors and technicians having to work Sundays, particularly when many have already performed two shows on Saturday and, in some cases, Friday as well. But the evidence from Broadway, where Sunday opening has been the norm for some time, is that it works to everyone’s advantage.

Actors have two evenings at home rather than just the one as at present in Britain.

So let’s get on with it: let’s fill those theatres and get those tills jingling. My one condition is that none of the actors who play in my Sunday cricket team succumbs. We’ve been having enough trouble raising a team as it is and frankly, some things are even more important than art.

Michael Simkins is an actor and writer, and is about to play Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago at the Cambridge Theatre

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