We are in the happy, and just occasionally overwhelming, position in London of there being far more theatre openings to accommodate than there are nights in the week. So critics frequently have choices to make. You can easily go to the theatre five or six nights a week and still see only a fraction of what’s on. On the larger papers – The Guardian or Telegraph or Times or (sometimes) the Independent – there are deputies, who help the lead critics cover the terrain, though the second stringers are often also deputised around the country, with the Guardian’s Lyn Gardner, Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish and the Times’ Sam Marlowe, diligently clocking up train miles as they do so.
But being a one-man band, as I am (along with many of my Sunday paper colleagues), we can only cover what we can cover. So its frustrating when you get a ‘dead’ week like the one we’re in now – the sole opening of any significance was Pool (No Water) that opened at the Lyric Hammersmith on Wednesday – whereas the coming week has four openings on Tuesday, seven on Wednesday, two on Thursday, and three on Friday.
With so many productions fighting for so few critics – and so little space in the papers themselves – there are going to be some that are lost entirely. Of course, productions come to the boil – ready for public exposure – on their own timetables, not to a critical one. But the critical mass of productions vying for our attention in London at the moment is surely no good for anyone.
