A leading Australian website critic last week made an astonishing admission: she fled from the opening night of the Sydney premiere of Love Never Dies at the interval. Yet she reviewed as much as she had bothered to see nonetheless.
Apart from the gross discourtesy that her behaviour represents — she should be reminded that she’s a guest of the management, and having accepted the privilege of a free ticket and their hospitality, she had a duty to sit it out, however painful it was for her — it was even more so a discourtesy to those who bother to read her: I once heard it said by a critic that he saw the shows “so you don’t have to”, and on that basis, a critic needs to sit through the entire show to be able to do so.
I won’t deny that I’ve walked out of shows myself; but usually only when I’ve paid for my own ticket and wasn’t on duty to write about it (and therefore had bought the right to do whatever I choose, though part of me feels uncomfortable for the actors who still have to persevere in the face of sometimes visibly dwindling audiences).
The part-review mentioned above appeared on a website that’s appropriately called Stage Noise, and it represents the dangerous side of the internet. It can be a place, as Shakespeare might have put it, where tales are “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
On the other hand, the web can also usefully provide a forum for critics to do their work away from the commercial and space restraints that typically operate in newspapers. Of course, this can lead to a kind of verbal diarrhoea - heck, I know I’ve been guilty of it myself on this blog, where you’re unchecked by word counts - but at its best, the web allows space for real, considered thought and proper writing, in an ongoing context.
This blog, for instance, is now in its 7th year (and this is the 1612th entry to it!), so there’s a serious archive here, and agree or disagree with me (and there are many who do both), you can follow my train of thought over various issues and several years.
I don’t, however, usually use this blog for criticism per se - I’m paid to write that elsewhere, whether for the Sunday Express or The Stage - but to address wider issues, including, of course, the state of criticism itself. But there are blogs that are criticism-led, and the author of one of them, the academic and writer Jill Dolan has just won the George Jean Nathan Award, America’s biggest theatre criticism award, for her blog The Feminist Spectator.
Applauding Dolan’s award in The Guardian, Karen Fricker - a fellow academic and part-time critic (who writes for the US trade paper Variety in London) - perceptively noted, “Much of the joy of the online Feminist Spectator comes from the sense of someone letting their hair down, writing with lucidity and freedom about whatever she bloody well pleases. Mostly, it’s theatre - Dolan regularly travels up to New York to see major productions and fringe work - but she also covers film and television, even the odd awards show. For those of us used to consuming (and generating) theatre commentary in blasts of 750 words or less, the length of Dolan’s posts can feel daunting. But it’s a rare treat these days to read someone working their way through a critique so thoroughly and thoughtfully, and an inspiration to see how Dolan keeps issues of gender and sexuality (and difference, more broadly) at the forefront of her posts without them ever feeling airlifted in. Gender’s an issue because it’s an issue. This is how a feminist sees it. Boom.”
Fricker also adds, “One can’t also help but feel a pragmatism in the committee’s decision - opening up to bloggers means that they’ll continue to have people to give the award to.” Noting that veteran film critic J Hoberman had just been dismissed from New York’s Village Voice, she says it’s “but the latest in a long list of attritions in the ranks of quality American arts criticism, and the ongoing economic downturn will surely mean more papers closing down and/or letting staff critics go in favour of freelancers and wire copy in the coming months.”
As George Hunka, another critic-turned-regular blogger pointed out regarding Mr Hoberman’s fate, “A sign of the times: one of the first things that film critic J. Hoberman did when he was laid off from the Village Voice earlier this week was to start a blog.” Hunka’s own blog, he notes in the same entry, was about to mark its eighth anniversary; but he also pointed out in another entry, “As we have rehearsed many times on this site and elsewhere, anyone with access to the web can be a critic these days, but fewer and fewer people can actually make a living at it. Dolan, presumably, doesn’t get paid a dime for her blog, but has her academic income to support her.”
The same, of course, applies at a commercial site like the Huffington Post, where despite the fact that its founder Ariana Huffington sold the site last year to AOL for a whopping $315m, bloggers are simply not paid for their efforts, but like the platform it provides them to reach an audience from. Indeed, one former leading New York drama critic Howard Kissel, who used to write for the New York Daily News for some 20 years, is a regular contributor there.
I disagree with you mark. If a critic is having a truly awful time let them leave as long as they announce that's what they've done. Their act of leaving tells me as a reader just how awful they found whatever show they were watching. As you know, if there's a truly vile and lousy first act the chances that the second one is going to get substantially better are slim. Unlike other critics who sleep through shows ( no names please) or review shows that they didn't attend ( the late Sheridan Morley) , this one sat there for an hour hated what she saw and thought: It's not worth it. Who hasn't gone to the office and then gone home sick after half a day? Her obligation as a critic is to be honest with her readers about her responses to the show, her readers presumably know her attitudes and know full well that she is probably not a fan of ALW shows. She has no obligation to the management for the free ticket and a free drink - that's their decision to provide it for her. They could have said: We'd love for you to review it and so that you have the total audience experience, we'd like you to buy your ticket so that you'll feel more invested in the show and then feel the need to stay and get your money's worth.
But they didn't. Management wants a critic to have a good time and make the theatre experience as painless as possible - and even though she no doubt had a great location and an interval drink and probably a souvenier brochure - she still chose to leave that confortable safe haven in the theatre rather than endure a second act of ALW' s not dead yet opus. Good on her!
I left that website halfway through. The article was unreadable for the flabby formatting and ridiculous amount of bold.
Well said Mark.
I believe that as a professional critic, when I buy my ticket I buy the right to leave before the end. Until then, it is my job to stay. My job is not to have a good time or a bad one, but to report on the time that I had and what I experienced.
When a critic leaves before the end of a production, it says rather more about their attitude to their profession than what it is that they are seeing.
@Laurence Kupp: so presumably you're okay with a reviewer filing a review of a cast album, say, after only listening to the overture and of a play you've written after only seeing the first scene?
In your recent review of Company, you focus on Being Alive, but you later blog that you left just before the final scene. I wonder why you didn't mention that fact in your review?
I expect, because the final scene follows Being Alive? Sorry!
@Kenneth Griffin: Well spotted! But the reason for leaving on this occasion, which I freely admitted to in the subsequent blog, was not dislike of the show -- but the sheer practicality of the fact that unless I had left when I did, I would have been stuck in Sheffield for the night (and would have missed my flight to Belfast the next morning). I guess that was my own problem; but I did not feel it impacted on my critical judgement of the production. I had seen virtually the entire show, bar the very last scene, and know the show inside out from past viewings of it, so was hardly in suspense about what was going to happen. It's very different to leaving at the interval.
@Mark, it is the artists job to engage his/her audience. If they are a critic the chances are that they are somewhat interested in what they are reviewing ( or at least its art form) in the first place .
You cannot equate sitting through the entire first act of a musical and deciding to leave with listening to just the Overture on a cast recording; but if they listen to a fair sampling of the recording or at least half of it - then yes, I think that's fair.
As for a play I've written, I would expect that a reviewer ( Like the one in Austraila) would stay through to the end of the first act when there is an appropriate break. If my play has failed to engage the reviewer by then well I'd be happier if they left - the last thing I want to do is cause anyone especially a critic any undue misery and get the negative energy which they are bringing to the proceedings out of the auditorium.
Completely agree with Mark re. not leaving before end of show if can help it, when there for reviewing purposes.
Personally, I've had the experience of deciding, because I was reviewing, that I had to remain at a show when I would have preferred to leave during the interval, and then finding I could write more positive responses to the second half - the show had, in fact, improved.
Part of reviewing is re-viewing, putting out what you have seen, heard and felt so that others can, from your writing, gain an idea of whether or not they are likely to have a similar experience / opinion. (Which is why it is important to give examples of the matters on which you express an opinion and not just say 'liked' or 'didn't like'.)
While it was right to admit to leaving early, having done so, to not give a full accounting of a piece is to not complete your job. Where it isn't paid work, you are still seeing something for free on the understanding that there will be a full review, not a half one.
It's the theatre's choice to make this deal, yes, but the deal is for a full review - that is what has been accepted by the reviewer. The theatre is already taking a risk in that there may be a negative piece - it shouldn't have to worry that, actually, there won't be a fully apt and considered one. Not with a writer of quality, anyway.
Nice bit of indignation Mark. Were you unaware of Diana Simmonds' tweet making clear that she was not being paid to review the show or did you not want the truth to get in the way of a good story? Judging by her review of the first half, she was doing Andrew Lloyd Webber a favour by leaving when she did. We bet Kevin Spacey is wishing she'd done the same with his production of Richard III.
I agree with Mark. I didn't realize that reviewers judged a show on their own personal feelings! I thought there was a check list of industry standards and measures that they measured each performance against to at least give some type of reasonable judgement from.
It's a bit dodgy to allow a well versed person to review your work! Where are the reputable people who represent the ordinary masses?
If a person does not like Sir ALW works, why on earth would that tone deaf and unsoulful creature be invited to a review in the first place? Head spinning here...
@rageofthestage: Being paid or unpaid to write a review doesn't absolve a critic of the responsibilities of being one. It's a different matter to whether you've paid for your ticket or not: when you've paid for your ticket, you can leave whenever you like, or not even turn up at all, and write whatever you like. The West End Whingers have made their name by their brightly irreverent reviews, but by operating mainly as punters who have bought their own tickets, they have therefore no obligation to stay if they choose not to -- and their site is under the own editorial control, too, so they can say whatever they wish to there as well.
It's different to a situation where, as here, the person puts themselves forward as a critic -- and accepts the management's hospitality as one.
If I'm having a bad time at a show I always remind myself that reviewing is a privilege. Free seats (usually the best in the house) and the attendant hospitality demand personal courtesy from a reviewer, if nothing more. A one-star diatribe is fine, if that's what the production has earned, but the act of walking out on a bad experience is a denial of the critical process. You cannot hold a valid or credible opinion on what you have not seen, nor on what you have only partly seen.
Mark, the West End Whingers stopped being 'ordinary' ticket-buying punters a long time ago, a fact to which they allude in their review of Love Never Dies, posted in March 2010, in which they bemoan the (for them, unusual) situation of having to buy their own tickets. You can't have it both ways - if Diana Simmonds is a professional critic whatever the context, how can she also be part of the 'dangerous side of the internet' full of tales 'told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'? Her review reflected views already expressed by many of the mainstream critics, just a bit more irreverently and amusingly expressed. And she was also making an important point about the cynicism of the production, so perhaps she wasn't feeling very 'courteous' when she left the theatre
@rageoffstage: Diana Simmonds may not have left Kevin Spacey's Richard111 at interval, but Bob Carr, the former Premier of New South Wales certainly did. And blogged about it the next day. He went home to watch a Woody Allen film on tv.A greater critcal serve, I think
Don't worry Mark - your personal hate brigade just have their collective panties in a bunch because of your "whiny excuse" for leaving shows early. Possibly there was a tweet to the affect that Diana was not paid for the review, but as far as I can tell, you were referring specifically to the aforementioned review in which she absolutely did not state that she was not paid for it. Hate brigade splits hairs; we split them right back. They claim you're the one who can't move on but as evidenced here, they keep returning to take pot shots at you rather than taking their own advice and ignoring the opposing side.
I agree with Mark also: I think it's unprofessional and unethical for a journalist or blogger to write a review without having seen the full production, even if that journalist or blogger is not enjoying it. By some of the offending reviewer's comments and other reviews, it is pretty clear that she had her mind made up before taking her seat which I am assuming was in the balcony to make it easier for her to watch the show while looking down her nose. She also referenced an actor who hasn't been with the production since part-way through the Melbourne run further demonstrating a lack of professionalism and attention to detail - even the large ones. While the production isn't perfect, it is better than most and a credit to Australian theatre by those who put it together. She went into the Capitol Theatre with an agenda beyond writing a fair review (much like rageoffstage I might add, judging by their comments here and on their blog). From her comments it is clear that the cynicism she referenced in the review wasn't coming from the stage, but wafting from her seat.
Erin (aka rageoffstage) the issue is not whether this woman got paid or not. She accepted free tickets and hospitality and then wrote a review based on half a show. What a disgrace!
Thanks Mark for highlighting this, I certainly would take any future reviews of hers with a grain of salt. Actually its kinda reminicent of a certain hate group who spend most of their wastrel lives panning a show they have never seen.
Maybe they have a spot for Dianna in their miserable little group!
Andrew Lloyd Webber (aka KDL) - yes two can play at this game. So sad that a genuine debate has been turned into a troll-fest by the last two posters who don't seem to be capable of understanding that it is possible to find fault with something without having an 'agenda' beforehand. PS: who is Erin?
Sorry @Rageoffstage your vernacular is so similar to LSD stalwart Erin I got distracted about to whom I was directing my response.
Now @Rageoffstage (your hidden LSD identity aside), the whole argument you present (deliberately) detracts from the topic on which Mark's blog is based, that is - the premise is that an author has actually SEEN the show before writing a 'review'
This one did not only fail to see the entire performance before writing her 'review' but didn't even research the cast at all. Begs the question was she even there at all, since the cast she quoted was from the Melbourne opening. Maybe the champagne flows too freely for people like Diana Simmonds and one show opening just melds into the next!
Troll-fest? Trolls post "inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic" comments. The first comment which meets one of those categories is...(drum roll) rageoffstage! Winning with an inflammatory "Nice bit of indignation Mark."
Just because commenters agree with Mark and disagree with your opinion, does not make them trolls.