“John Peter hasn’t got a f *ing clue…”. No, that’s not the sound that came out of me as I threw my copy of the Sunday Times across the room last weekend after reading his latest theatre round-up in the paper. I am more likely to swear after reading Christopher Hart or one of the other non-theatrically trained stand-ins the Culture section of that paper bizarrely uses for the lead review of the week instead of the diligent Peter, and indeed did so once again as I read the star rating that AA Gill attributed to his review of Boeing-Boeing. Since he’d given it only two stars, he saved me the bother of actually reading the review, since he clearly doesn’t have a clue, f***ing or otherwise….
But the headline comes instead from a blog entry that Tim Crouch has posted on The Guardian’s website, in which he reviews the reviewers of his show An Oak Tree that is currently playing at Soho Theatre. He points out something that I regularly do here: the vast dichotomy of critical opinion that can find in London, as with his show that has received everything from a four-star rave from the Guardian’s Lyn Gardner to one-star pans from The Independent’s Lynn Walker and the Sunday Times’ John Peter.
Crouch then points out, quite sensibly, “Theatre critics have no special access to the truth. And there should be no objective truth to art. The critics’ opinions are as subjective as anyone else’s”.
But Crouch wants to have his cake and eat it: if there’s no objective truth to art, there’s no truth to the good review just as there isn’t to the bad one, surely. Crouch then goes on to suggest that sometimes critics “just haven’t got a f***ing clue. Listen, everyone, listen, John Peter of The Sunday Times hasn’t got a f***ing clue. How great is that? Now move on, keep working.”
On the one hand, he wants to engage in a critical discussion of the reviews: “When I was an actor, I would have been devastated by a bad review. As a writer, I am fascinated by how different people have engaged with the ideas.” But Crouch’s way of engaging with Peter’s ideas is simply to resort to a playground insult, that he doesn’t have a f***ing clue. And he quite clearly feels a whole lot better for it having said it. (“How great is that?”) End of discussion. But surely it should be the start of one if he’s really that fascinated by the contradictory positions being taken on his show?
The interesting fact isn’t that critics have different opinions, but how we express them. True, I didn’t even bother to check what AA Gill said to justify his on Boeing-Boeing – but the vast majority of reviews were overwhelmingly favourable: Charlie Spencer even managed to report how Michael Billington was reacting across the aisle! “One of the great things about this job is turning up at a theatre expecting very little, only to discover that you are having the time of your life. Within minutes of the start of this old farce by the Swiss-born, French-based boulevardier Marc Camoletti, I was in danger of falling out of my seat with helpless laughter, and so, by the sound of it, was almost everyone else in the audience. Even stone-faced Michael Billington from the Guardian had a phizog wreathed in happy smiles…”
But sitting along the row from me, the Daily Express Simon Edge wasn’t laughing quite so freely. At least, however, he has the good grace as a journalist to report the reactions of others around him, even as he defends his own position: “The original Sixties production of the French farce Boeing-Boeing lasted seven y ears in the West End, 19 years in Paris and 21 days on Broadway. Judging from the hysterical reaction of the first-night audience, this modern revival with an all-star cast will fly and fly. But I am with the Americans. If it were up to me, this painfully unfunny production of a witless piece would be locked away in its hangar after two-and-a-half hours. I cannot over-stress that other people - cynical fellow-critics and renta-luvvies alike - seemed to think this was the most hilarious evening they had ever experienced. The woman in front of me was literally crying laughing. I, too, was close to tears - but mine were of the ‘get me out of here’ variety as I wondered what they thought was so funny… Unlike the deliciously complex, onion-layered farces of our own Ray Cooney, for example, you can see exactly what’s going to happen.”
I wouldn’t say, in this case, that Simon hasn’t got a clue – just a different view. And he’s expressed it so honestly that surely no one can complain. And that, above all, makes for good reviewing.
