We’ve all heard stories of those strange, obsessive types who attend the same play hundreds of times. This may not be normal behavior, but Rupert Christiansen says that there is great pleasure and intellectual growth to be derived from viewing the same work of theatre, art, or music more than once. “The point about the return visit is not the infantile pleasure of repetition, but the possibility of surprise. A good work of art never stays quite the same: it ambushes you, outwits you. A first exposure can provide the primitive excitement of wanting to know what happens next, a second provides the opportunity to register details, a third brings a sense of the underpinning joints and girders that make up the structure. And so it goes on.”