My boy around 4 months
Hello Theatre Folk – remember me? Colin Mitchell? No? Well it’s understandable considering that we’ve been in hibernation FOR THE LAST SIX MONTHS!
Apologies.
Our main excuse is that the site got corrupted by some evil link and gave us a bad rep on Google search. It took us a while to sort that out. But to be honest, I had a son come into the world earlier this year – his name’s Max btw that’s his photo up there – and being that I had to take on the Mr. Mom duties – well the workload of this site – which is basically a two-man band – just got too overwhelming. Add to that that our lovely and talented host – Enci – is busier than ever – and well – you get a six month layoff.
But we’re back. With a new design, a new perspective and a newer, better vision for what this site can do for Los Angeles Theatre – and beyond!
First, let me reintroduce what it is we do here for the the five or six people who may not know (shame on you!).
We are primarily a Los Angeles Theatre site that focuses on theatre criticism, theatre critics, reviews and everything associated with all of those things. Our “hook”, if you will, is that we have created the “Lemon Meter” for free use by the Los Angeles Theatre going audience. The Lemon Meter works much the same way that the Tomato Meter at the Rotten Tomatoes Film Review site works. Basically, the Lemon Meter is an aggregate scoring of the reviews for particular shows playing around town. We gather all the reviews, give each one a Sweet, Bittersweet, or Bitter rating, and then average all those into an aggregate score which become the overall Lemon Meter rating. For instance, say a show has ten reviews, 3 of those reviews are Bitter, 1 is Bittersweet and 6 are Sweet. The final overall Lemon Meter rating would be 60% Sweet. The Bittersweet review cancels itself out, and then we divide the Sweet reviews by the total number of reviews and we get the overall Lemon Meter rating. The actual rating of the specific reviews are done by me, Colin Mitchell (hey, someone has to make the call). Any overall rating below 60% is deemed Bitter, 60% and above is deemed Sweet. A show needs at least 3 reviews to merit a Lemon Meter rating. if a show gets all Bittersweet reviews the Lemon Meter rating would be deemed 100% Bittersweet. If a show gets at least six reviews and half are Bittersweet and half are Sweet. Again, the Lemon Meter rating would be 100% Bittersweet. There are some other nuances we’ve created to make things as fair as possible and I’ll try to clarify them along the way.
This site is also available for guest bloggers, so please register and subscribe and let us know you’d like to contribute and we’ll get you on board.
Along the way I’ll also add my own “ponderings” and links to other excellent sites here in town and around the country hoping to inspire controversy, provocation and just, well, thought. You are of course free to comment and we encourage you to. This is not a PG site so please don’t hold back. However, Civil Discourse is the name of the game. Bring it, but bring it with some intelligence and respect please.
We also have the “Critique of the Week” on Sunday, where I post my favorite review of the week. You have to guess WHY it’s my favorite, cuz it ain’t always because it’s the best written I’ll tell you that right now. We also have the Monday Moment, something odd and provocative to get your week rolling. And I hope to be adding other weekly ditties as we move along.
So please subscribe, register, comment! Tell your friends, your enemies, your pets! Bitter Lemons has returned and Los Angeles Theatre will never be the same.
More soon.
Relentlessly yours,
Colin Mitchell
