Reviewing the reviewers….

Since we give it, we can’t complain when we get it, I suppose: criticism, that is. The media section of today’s Independent does a double-page spread rounding up the critics – complete with capsule reviews of us, our educational credits, a sample review extract, and even a star rating applied to our work! Compton Miller, who put it together, rang me a couple of weeks ago to quiz me on the job, so I suppose I only have myself to blame for the impression he’s gained of me, but I really must dispute his characterisation of me a “workaholic bachelor” – he asked me questions about my personal life and I told him I did have one, so why the bachelor euphemism? (I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m gay. Or does he just mean to suggest that I can’t have any time for a life outside the theatre?) He notes that I confess “to seeing shows six days a week, regularly trawling the fringe and the provinces”, but then uses the information to dig at me: “You can almost see the nail marks as Shenton tries to escape the tiny review cage allotted him.” Yes, I have a limited amount of space in the Sunday Express, but at least it’s there; and I am able to amplify elsewhere, as he also notes: “Luckily, he also compiles a newsblog for The Stage, and is contributing editor to theatre.com. He worries that colleagues have recently ‘overdosed on Prozac’ because of their ‘ecstatic’ reviews of some musicals, but he often awards four or five stars.”

He duly awards me only two; but then, given the competition – and the fact that Nicholas de Jongh (“a gargolyle-faced iconoclast”) gets five – its as meaningless as those star ratings can sometimes be attached to our reviews. But it’s interesting that, despite his extensive research – the kind that has him twice quoting ‘colleagues’ (some who reportedly say it’s time that the “civilised, erudite dinosaur” Michael Billington exited stage right, or that the “waspish, Essex farmer’s son” Alastair Macaulay is “a bit grand”) – he digs up three reviews of the same show, Behind the Iron Mask, to illustrate opinions, and two of A Right Royal Farce; while wrongly labelling Alastair’s review of Pool, No Water a review of Therese Raquin. But if its weird to be mentioned, it must be even stranger – if not downright galling – to be excluded. Where’s Sheridan Morley from the round-up? Even though there’s Rosie Millard – self-appointed theatre critic of the New Statesman and Toby Young, both on relatively small-circulation magazines; and if those are included, where’s Jane Edwardes, theatre editor of Time Out (surely one of the most influential sources for fringe reviews), or Metro’s Claire Allfree, who has to be one of the most widely read of all London critics?

UDATE: December 13, 2006

My colleague Rosie Millard has written to clarify that she was not “self-appointed” to the post of drama critic of The New Statesman, as I put it above, on which she had previously been arts editor. She had, however, given up that post before being appointed theatre critic by the magazine’s editor. I would like to apologise to Rosie and set the record straight. Since writing the blog entry in question, I have also met Rosie in Stratford-upon-Avon, and found her to be a genuine enthusiast for the theatre, even if her home commitments make it difficult for her to cover more than one opening a week.