Critical conflicts of interest….

How close to the “product” should a critic get? Are we part of the process of putting on theatre, or should we be entirely outside it? A friend and colleague, Georgina Brown, recently did a stint serving on the board of the Bristol Old Vic, until she resigned following their decision to suddenly close the place for refurbishment, though without plans in place to do so until yesterday’s announcement that they now need to raise a whopping £2million to complete the financing on the £7million projected costs.

Georgina, who has a home in nearby Bath, was able to bring both local and national insight to her place on the board, composed largely of local dignitaries who had no wider view of the theatrical landscape that she has acquired in her job. But did this compromise George when she came to review plays there, giving them unduly unfavourable reviews? On the contrary, she says, she was more likely to be harsher in her judgement than not. And for George, she found the experience, though ultimately the bleakest episode of her professional life, illuminating rather than compromising for herself personally. She was able to get “under the bonnet” (my phrase, not hers), of the way the theatre, or rather one particular theatre, works.

How many critics have an intricate knowledge of the workings of theatre and how it is actually put on? But do we need to have? Surely we should come there, as the public does, as (hopefully informed) commentators on what’s onstage, not on how it got there?

But since we are also part of the story of what happens once it does – creating a public record of the event – we could do with using every bit of armoury available to make us more informed. And audiences are increasingly responding to trying to do the same: the National Theatre’s platform programmes have become one of the fastest growing parts of their repertoire, with some 30,000 people a year attending them now.

Being on a theatre board provided George with a unique perspective – one that we could all benefit from. And they benefited, too – she was performing a valuable (and freely given) public service.

As it is, critics are, like it or not, part of the human fabric of the theatre. We have friendships – and sometimes hostilities – with each other and with other theatre professionals. Does chatting to a fellow critic in the interval about what they think compromise what we think? (Note from the Critics’ Circle rule book – it’s bad form to do so, but the rule is more honoured in the breach than the observance.)

But what about something else that many of us do – interviewing the director, playwright or star before the production opens? Surely that’s a backstage glimpse, too, of the intentions rather than the final product, and is bound to influence what we think. Again, as with George’s experience at Bristol, we may find that the inside knowledge makes us harsher judges – we may, as a result, register the gap between what they said they wanted to achieve and what they do actually achieve even more powerfully. But even if we don’t write the profiles ourselves, we may well read them – and that may brings us (as it does the public as well) to the play with some preconceptions. In my case, I sometimes do the interviewing publicly, when I host National Theatre platforms (though they’re usually after the opening and I’ve already written about them).

The “inside track” of the potential, perceived or real, of having preconceptions from being on a theatre board or having conducted an interview with someone with the show is even more pressing when someone’s a biographer — and therefore even closer to the subject. The Michaels, Billington and Coveney, still review Pinter plays and Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals respectively, even though both have written biographies on them. Coveney is also married to West End press agent Sue Hyman – and reviews shows that she looks after (and could therefore be said to have a commercial interest in the success of, since the longer it runs, the longer she’s paid). Of course, I’m sure that he takes pains not to let it impact on his judgement, which presumably may make breakfast a little frosty sometimes, just as Georgina went out of her way not to allow her place on the Bristol board to influence hers.

The truth is that we are never a blank slate – and it’s an imperfect world. Personal relationships always play a part in everything we do. It’s what makes us human, if not necessarily humane.