Critics not wanted….

Continuing yesterday’s theme here of reviews that are unwelcome (for giving things away), here’s notice of critics who are not being encouraged to actually review a show at all: when Ralph Fiennes opened in The Faith Healer at Dublin’s Gate Theatre last week, I sent two e-mails to the theatre’s press representative (and the theatre’s deputy director, according to the theatre’s website) Marie Rooney, and left a phone message with someone in her office, none of which were replied to. So I gave up and simply didn’t go: it will be easier, in any case, to catch it on Broadway in a few weeks time, since I know the press agent looking for the show there well, and he actually returns e-mails.

And I see from my colleague Kate Bassett’s review that appeared in the Independent on Sunday that I was not alone in the lack of encouragement to cover it: “I thought I must have been imagining things”, she wrote, “but Ralph Fiennes really is – as had been rumoured – starring in a revival of Brian Friel’s (arguably) greatest play in Dublin, directed by Jonathan Kent and transferring thence to Broadway”. When Kate enquired, she reports she was told, “That is happening, but we’ve not sent out a press release”, just a few days before opening night.

And another colleague who went tells me that, though she collected her tickets from a press desk on the night, no one welcomed her and she subsequently received a message, via Marie Rooney’s assistant, that they were sorry not have met her when she was there.

Critics and PRs exist in a sometimes uneasy truce – in order to do both of our jobs, we need each other – but it needn’t be as unhelpful as this. In America, where they do things very differently, the New York PR for the show that I told this to was understandably astonished at the failure of anyone to even get back to me.

Mind you, this is a theatre whose personnel clearly play by their own rules: at the first night of Uncle Vanya, Sam Mendes’ final production as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in September 2002 – in a version coincidentally also by Brian Friel – proceedings were constantly interrupted for spectators seated in the circle by the constant pips of arriving text message alerts. The offender was then seen to reply; which of course only meant another pip arriving a minute or so later when a further reply came to him. Confronted afterwards by an angry colleague of mine, he answered: “Chekhov is robust enough to withstand the intrusion”. The offender was subsequently identified as Michael Colgan, artistic director of, yes, you’ve guessed it, the Gate Theatre, Dublin.