8 May 2008
The Conversation
Posted by Colin Mitchell under: ponderings .
Back in the day, when print was profound and eloquence was…well…eloquent…playwrights and critics used to have running…er…well…”feuds”. I’m going to call them “conversations” for the sake of civility. A play would open, the critic would publish their review in the paper, if the playwright didn’t agree he would post a letter or a commentary in same paper and a “conversation” would begin. Others would join in and a freakin’ “discussion” would break out! Or maybe even an “argument” God forbid!
Now in many cases, many of these conversations were instigated by hidden agendas, personal animosity, or just grandiose egos, but they stirred debate, they made the idea of theatre a communal experience, something that the general public could watch from a safe distance, or partake in, get riled up about, or go and see for themselves what all the ruckus was about.
Do we have these conversations with the critics anymore? I would say, not much. On occasion you’ll see an artistic director or a producer and maybe even a director from time to time, post a “letter to the editor” calling out a critic or an editor, but rarely do you find the playwright entering the fray.
Why is this?
I would say for one reason and one reason only; fear of looking like a sore loser. I have been in this situation on a couple of occasions. One in particular: I had a play entitled “Bitten by a Fly” which had a nice run several years ago, got Pick of the Week in LA Weekly and a nice review in the Times, but the review from Backstage and Variety were, to put it mildly, puzzling. Backstage was pretty much a wash because the reviewer obviously had no clue what they were talking about - and was of that variety I’ve described before who spends the first paragraph talking about the parking and the “scary” neighborhood - so there wasn’t much to do there - except perhaps ask the Backstage Editors why they’d decided to cull their reviewers from the audience of the “Barney the Dinosaur” TV Show. But the Variety review…well that was another matter.
I can’t offhand remember who the reviewer was, but I believe he was one of the more “senior” critics, one of the guys you really wanted to come and review your show. I believe the headline of the review was “Fly Bitten by Implausibility.” And he went on to say how “unbelievable” and “implausible” the whole premise was. Ladies and gentlemen, the play was about a famously self-centered but incredibly successful painter who gets bitten by a fly carrying a rare disease that causes her to lose her sight and then winds up being haunted by the fly who is a fallen angel seeking to gain his own redemption. It’s called “magical-realism.” The entire style of the piece was based on implausibility. It was almost like the reviewer thought they were watching something else, and episode of “Grey’s Anatomy,” hoping, praying, that the fly being represented by an actual man on stage would wind up being just a part of a dream. Never before did I so want to call this gentleman out on his absolute failure to grasp even the basic concept of my play. Tear it to pieces for its failure to fulfill the premise, shred it for its lack of dimensionality in the characters, take it task for being overwritten, predictable, anything! But call a magical-realism play “implausible” is like saying a baseball game didn’t have enough touchdowns.
But I didn’t continue the conversation, because I didn’t want to look like a sore loser, and also - and I know this may sound bizarre after everything I’ve written here on Bitter Lemons - I didn’t really care what he thought. His was just one man’s opinion. The majority of regular folk liked my show. I wanted the review to bring in the majority. THOSE are the opinions that matter most to me - the “regular folk”. There is nothing sweeter than someone who NEVER goes to theatre seeing your show and saying, “Wow. That was really good. When’s your next show?”
But the reviewers help us get those “regular folk” in the seats. Word of mouth is probably more powerful than a good review - but they are both important to have for success.
But the conversation never happened in my case. And it should have. Who knows, the reviewer probably would never have even responded. But that is not my point. My point is this: we, be it playwrights, directors, actors, producers, or just theatre-goers, should be unafraid in engaging in civil discourse with the critic. And the critic should not be afraid either.
That in the end is what I’m trying to get to today: the review is simply the beginning of the conversation. Not the end. For far too long we’ve forgotten that. Time to wake up.