In the reviewing and interviewing spotlight…..

According to Susannah Clapp in yesterday’s Observer(who incidentally also came closest to identifying Quentin as party to this union), “Hodge is magnetic as the sometimes crumpled, sometimes magnificent trannie. He’s glam in a beaded frock, sad in a suit. And on press night, spruce and bosomy in a hound’s-tooth check jacket, pencil skirt and blond bouffant, he swayed down the aisle, singing to wheezy accordion accompaniment the tearjerker of the show - then paused to join the hands of two male (in one case, Mail) critics.” Alice Jones makes the same mistake in Friday’s Independent, writing of Hodge, “Revealing an improbably good pair of pins, he exudes an unglamorous, boss-eyed charm as the ageing drag queen Zaza, relishing his performance as he rolls his words Piaf-style and prowls into the audience to join the hands of two rather unwilling Fleet Street critics.” (Hey, are you surprised I was a bit unwilling? Not that there are many candidates amongst the Critics’ Circle that would make me more willing, to be frank).

Becoming part of the reviews certainly adds to the hall of mirrors that watching this production at such close quarters makes one feel oneself being reflected in already. But it does give one pause when two major papers missed who was doing the marrying; what else do we get wrong?

Mind you, at least most critics come armed with notebooks and pens (though I will admit that I can’t always read the notes I scribble in the dark); unlike AA Gill, who in a very bizarre admission right at the end of an exclusive interview he did with David Hare about his new play The Vertical Hour in today’s Sunday Times admits, “As we reach the foyer, Hare is going to a cast and production bonding party. I ask for his phone number to check stuff. ‘You don’t take notes,’ he says, ‘or use a recorder. No. ‘So, will you go away and write this up now? No, I’ll wait a couple of weeks. Well, how will you remember?’ By remembering. ‘But will it sound like me?’ No, it will sound like me having talked to you.”

This is the journalistic equivalent of the exchange between Nathan Detroit and Big Jule in Guys and Dolls, when the latter presents his own blank dice to gamble with. Nathan says, “But these dice ain’t got no spots on ‘em. They’re blank.” Big Jule replies, “I had the spots removed for luck. But I remember where the spots formerly were.” Nathan then says, “You are going to roll blank dice and remember where the spots were?”; to which Big Jule asks him incredulously, “Detroit… do you doubt my memory?”

Without doubting Gill’s abilities of minute recall myself, his entire interview with Hare is necessarily revealed to be a kind of sense-memory of what was said, rather than the actual words themselves. So, presumably, are the reactions that Gill also records in intricate detail, as in this exchange: “As we get up to go, I ask: ‘Do you ever get angry when you write. Is anger part of it?’ He waits and thinks, then looks away. ‘Yes, deep anger, mostly directed at myself, real self-loathing. I used to suffer from that, less now, but when I started, it was very strong.’ And he tails off.”

Hmmm. How many of those moments actually happened? And how many of those words were actually said, and in that order? Or is in fact merely putting in stage directions to accompany the words he would have liked to have heard, since there’s no record for either fact? From a restaurant critic who only last year was given three pages (plus a cover portrait) to discuss the shortcomings, as he perceived them, of the current tribe of drama critics (as I reported here at the time), he proves himself now to be as lazy as he is arrogant as a journalist: not for him the usual stock-in-trade for conducting interviews, which is to keep a tape recorder running and would allow him to verify his memory of the conversation and actually allow accurate quotes to be reported. But no, that would be too much work, I suppose (and wouldn’t make the copy nearly as interesting, if the words he ascribed as being said weren’t in fact said).

The worst part of my job, to be frank, is the endless transcribing of tapes; but it’s a necessary evil. The actors, directors and writers who are our subjects deserve the basic courtesy of being heard of in their own words; it’s up to us as journalists, however, to then try to convey their voices. AA Gill seems to have got it all muddled up – so the only words, and the only voice, you hear is that of Gill himself. It’s narcissism run riot, and the Sunday Times indulge it rampantly. (Gill was their Culture section cover boy twice last year; as well as the feature on critics, he was also seen in full panto drag another week, not a pretty sight). But more seriously, given that the piece on Hare reveals it was the only piece of publicity that he was deigning to do for the production, it was also a missed opportunity for us to hear from the playwright about his play in his own words, too.