The other day I hosted this year’s Critics’ Circle Awards, an event at which actors and artists meet the critics who nightly judge their work. Of course, we’ve come to praise them on this occasion, so it’s an afternoon where we treat each other with kid gloves; but there’s an underlying tension, of course. “So those are the bastards who write those things about us!”, you can feel some muttering.
And one even said it out loud: in collecting his award for Best New Play for One Man Two Guvnors, Richard Bean made an astonishingly aggrieved speech in which he recounted the true story of a relative upon whom a practical joke had been played, when he was inside a pub and his friends told police that he had a bomb; he came out and was shot dead. With friends like those, he said, who needed enemies? And that’s exactly how he said he felt being amongst critics who were giving him an award….
You do wonder why he showed up, given how he felt. Others, though, were far more generous; I had an e-mail from one industry insider yesterday who said, “It is just about the best awards going in my view - takes the subject seriously, but not yourselves/ourselves too seriously. A tricky line but worth it. Really makes us feel that all of us are in it together.”
But if praise from critics is nice, peer review (to use a much-loved Arts Council phrase) is even nicer, at least when it’s positive. In a profession where jealousies sometimes run rife, as in all walks of life, acclaim from one’s colleagues must mean even more.
Just the other day, too, I tweeted after seeing The Madness of King George III: “David Haig is one of those wonderful under-rated actors who’s never become a star but has also never given a bad performance, either! And in Madness of George III he combines classical weight and authority with a moving descent into madness that is Lear-like.”
It got lots of responses, including this one from fellow actor Neil Stuke: “David Haig is a huge star within the acting fraternity…a Colossus. That means very little in the world of ‘Celeb’ though…”
And in a world where Russell Grant has just been cast to replace Michael Crawford in The Wizard of Oz, that’s a depressing truth. Of course shows need a ‘hook’ to draw audiences, but surely The Wizard of Oz is a hook in itself and does not require this kind of stunt casting.
As it is, it used the casting-by-public television vote route to find its original Dorothy, and her replacement is going to be one of the runner-ups. Andrew Lloyd Webber recently announced his intention to cast a forthcoming arena tour production of Jesus Christ Superstar via a similar contest, now relocated from the BBC to ITV; but earlier this week Tim Rice spoke out against it to the Daily Telegraph, complaining, “I really don’t think Superstar needs that tasteless reality television treatment. Those shows are relentlessly downmarket, which is fine if the show is a lightweight bit of fluff. I am fully behind an arena show, but I just don’t think you need another television series to do that.”
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