The drain of non-stop Stoppard

By the seventh hour, my back was aching, I couldn't feel my legs and I was so exhausted, I could hardly keep my eyes open. The temperature was icy, I was tired and hungry and desperate for a sip of water. No, I wasn't scaling Everest - I was at the National Theatre watching the third instalment of Tom Stoppard's nine-hour epic trilogy, The Coast of Utopia.

I suspect, like climbing Everest, or enduring natural childbirth, it's the sort of experience you want to be able to say you've had, but would rather not actually go through. Now, I am no novice when it comes to arduous cultural experiences - a childhood spent sitting through my father's tortuously long theatre productions was good training. As I child, I soon realised I could get out of having to go to bed by begging my parents to let me watch a chunk of Wagner's 16-hour Ring Cycle.

However, sitting through three plays while the rest of London was in the park enjoying a heatwave required the stamina of an ox and the concentration of a brain surgeon. Stoppard's trilogy follows the lives of a group of Russian revolutionaries from the 1830s to the 1860s, during a time when politics and philosophy really gave the intelligentsia something to think about. By the end, I felt I had aged 30 years too.

I took my boyfriend, Adam, with me. This is always an accurate test of devotion. (I once took a boyfriend to see the five-hour opera Tristan und Isolde. Unfortunately, neither of us made it past the first interval, nor did our relationship.) Last Saturday we arrived at the theatre at

10.30am and, knowing the last play wouldn't finish until 12 hours later, I had come laden with provisions: sandwiches, fruit, crisps, water, Thermos flask, plus blanket, pillow, an eye mask and Walkman for the boring bits. "Ooh look, she's brought a hamper," said one admiring theatregoer as I struggled down the aisle with two wicker baskets. I soon realised, however, that while the seats were spacious and comfortable, the National Theatre doesn't allow much room for picnic equipment, and after bumping into several people I headed for the cloakroom. I decided I could get through the first act without a snack. Entering late, I noisily found my seat in the dark during a quiet bit and people tutted loudly. I didn't dare open my pack of Polos after that.

Fortified by our picnic lunch and several cups of coffee during the hour-long break after the first play, we were ready for round two. I prayed my bladder would hold until the interval and took my pillow and eye mask in with me in case I decided to take a muchneeded nap. "I don't think that's a very good advert for Mr Stoppard, is it?" joked Frank, a man in his seventies sitting next to me. When I told him I was there for the day, he looked impressed. "It's so nice that young people are taking an interest in the theatre.

I wish I could do all three in one go, but I just haven't got the strength these days," he said.

I waited for the lights to dim and settled down for a sleep, although I was too ashamed to put my eye mask on. However, with its heady romantic mix of doomed love triangles and family tragedies, the second play, Shipwreck, was the most gripping of the three and all hints of tiredness soon vanished.

By the beginning of the third part the atmosphere in the theatre had changed from the highbrow snootiness of the morning to a kind of Blitz-spirit jollity. People recognised others who had also arrived in the morning and they chatted in their seats. Once the play started, people laughed harder, louder and longer. Stoppard's wit hadn't gone off the scale, I just think people were approaching a hysteria brought on by sitting in a dark room for most of the day. As any marathon runner will tell you, the last stretch is by far the hardest. You desperately want to make it to the end, but you're not convinced you can. By now I was dreading deep-vein thrombosis, my pillow was no longer any comfort and my blanket only just kept off the chill from the air-conditioning.

When it was all over I saw a woman I recognised from the coffee queue in the morning and went over to chat to her, buoyed by the feeling that since we had gone through so much together I could shake off my London aloofness and approach any stranger I wanted. "I wasn't sure if I was going to make it," said Shireen Daley, a teacher from west London. "But I'm so glad I did. I feel it's a bit of an achievement and, of course, it was immensely enjoyable. I feel drained, but elated, too." As we compared back aches, Jeremy Irons loped past. Since he always looks exhausted, it was difficult to tell whether he had been there for as long as we had.

The next day we were still as dazed and overawed by the vast tale of Russia's 19th century revolutionaries as we had been when we stepped out into the summer night. I don't think I'll ever see anything as overwhelming, entertaining and physically demanding as Stoppard's trilogy and I can say I've been there, done that. And I didn't even need my Walkman.