The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (11 page)

John Lahr:
A critic should be a feeling individual. Feeling is as important as thinking. That’s where a lot of the stumbling blocks are in present criticism. I’m not sure people can parse their feelings well. Therefore, certain kinds of plays are misunderstood depending on the psychological nature of the critic. The more humanity you have, the more humanity you feel. The more limited you are psychologically, the less you can see in certain plays. It’s about both intellectual and emotional sophistication.

Terry Teachout:
You need to have the right attitude in order to be a good critic. There has to be a fundamental generosity and excitement. You have to want to communicate enthusiasm. You can’t be there just to pick out flaws. I’m not sure you can breed that out of someone whose idea of a critic was shaped by the movie
All About Eve
.

Michael Dale:
I don’t think I’ve ever met a critic who doesn’t adore going to the theater, and who doesn’t take a seat sincerely prepared to possibly see the best show ever. I think that’s the ideal attitude to have.

Michael Sommers:
I’ve always been a glass-half-full sort of writer. To quote from the musical
Spamalot
, I “always look on the bright side of life.” I rarely get offended. The last thing that offended me in years was
Intimacy
, that terrible Off-Broadway play at the New Group by Thomas Bradshaw. The whole thing was just so foul. Still, I did wonder how they made that ejaculation scene work. Even with the worst shows, you can always find something to be interested in.

Jeremy Gerard:
I consider myself a tough critic, but not a nasty critic. I don’t see shows that I don’t like as crimes against art, as some other critics do. They’re just shows I don’t happen to like. For me, no production is a life or death issue. I think of myself as fair, and that’s reflected in my ability to cover the industry in the way I do, and in continuing to write reviews that people pay fairly well for.

Zachary Stewart:
A critic should be intellectually curious, constantly trying to learn more about the world beyond his limited corner.

Alexis Soloski:
You need an open heart. I don’t think you’re doing anyone any favors if you go in without one. You need to be able to experience a show emotionally—to be disturbed by it, and confused by it, and delighted by it—and then be able to step back and evaluate that experience analytically.

Chris Jones:
You have to keep an open mind. Whatever history you may have with an artist, sometimes they can surprise you. They do great work when you don’t expect it. Or, they do terrible work when you expect greatness, and you have to be able to see that. You have to float above relationships and alliances, and be able to see a show for what it is on a given night. Artists change constantly. Theater changes constantly.

David Cote:
You have to be wise and naïve at the same time—wise in the sense of being an educated audience member and bringing all your years of reading and viewing to the table, and naïve in the sense of never being jaded and being open to new forms and experiences. If you grow cynical and tradition-bound, your writing may not suffer (some critics have made a career out of being aesthetic dinosaurs), but your thinking will rot.

Michael Musto:
Ideally, a critic should be able to separate his or her own life crises and challenges from what he or she is reviewing. When they enter the theater, they have to put everything else on the back burner. If they just came from the dentist, or if they just got jury duty, they have to objectively evaluate what they’re going to see—even when shows are endlessly opening in time for Tony Awards consideration, and you’re sitting through play after play. You can’t let that overabundance get to you, or make you numb, or dampen your critical faculties.

Elysa Gardner:
I don’t believe in being snarky. Making easy jokes is something we’ve all done. When I’m about to write something snarky, I try to stop myself and find a better way to put it.

Howard Shapiro:
You need to be open to everything. I could be a restaurant critic who hates Mexican food, but I would know when it was well-cooked and nicely presented. The same is true when covering any kind of art. Even if you don’t like a general kind of theater, you should acknowledge when it’s good and when it’s working.

Michael Schulman:
Openness is the most important part of the critic’s temperament. The biggest temptation for critics is cynicism. There’s a tendency for critics to get together for martinis after a show and to just start bashing the show and dragging each other’s esteem for it down. But the best theater makes you vulnerable to it. If you fall in love with a play—like if you fall in love with a person—you let your guard down. There’s a tendency for critics to keep their guard up and prove they didn’t fall for a play. It’s much harder to say that you were completely undone by a work of art.

Jeremy Gerard:
It’s an odd combination of knowing a great deal while not having any prejudices, and being open to new experiences while not abandoning your own history. I once had an experience with Neil Simon during a pre–Broadway tryout in Dallas. I was interviewing him, and he knew that I was not a fan of his from my earlier reviews. When the interview was over, he said, “If I knew you were the critic in Dallas, I wouldn’t have let the show open here. With you, I’m batting zero, so I have to believe you’ve written your review before you’ve seen the show.” And I said, “Well, I hope that whatever I write about your show, you won’t think that I’ve written the review before I go to see it, and I assure you that I haven’t written it already.” As it happens, the show in Dallas was a piece of shit. It was the all-female version of
The Odd Couple
.

Robert Feldberg:
Critics need to be patient and willing to go along with whatever a writer and director are doing. After the first five minutes, you may think it’s going to be awful, but you need to be able to withhold judgment, sit back, and say to yourself, “I’m going to let this happen. I don’t think this is going to work, but let me go with it and try to figure out what the writer intended.” It may end up being terrible, but you at least need to give it a hearing.

Andy Propst:
You have to be compassionate. You have to realize that, even on the worst of evenings, these are people who are doing their best. That’s not to say you should be namby-pamby, but a critic needs to understand that that a company of artists—be it on Broadway or in a tiny theater in the basement on the Lower East Side—did not set out to fail.

John Simon:
A critic should be very thick-skinned. As I know from experience, if you are a very tough critic, people tend to be very unkindly disposed towards you in all kinds of ways. You don’t get invited to many parties. You don’t get published in many places. You don’t get a kind word from many people.

Chris Jones:
To some degree, you have to be satisfied in heralding the work of others—which may sound strange to people who think that critics are egomaniacs. Getting really excited about someone else requires a subjugation of the self. Most people in the arts promote themselves, or their colleagues, or those for whom they work. A critic has to get excited about excellence not coming from his or herself, which is harder than it may seem. There’s a certain selflessness to it. The greatest reviews are driven by the work itself, and not by your own issues. It’s a delicate dance.

Michael Riedel:
Critics should enjoy being a bit of a showman and attracting attention to themselves. They should have a thrill for the kill and should not be afraid to put the knife in. There’s no place for someone who doesn’t take strong opinions. I really don’t believe in temperate criticism. I don’t believe in thoughtful “on the one hand, on the other hand” writing. To really engage the reader, you have to either make a case for something or tear it apart. It’s a waste of everyone’s time if you just say, “It was kind of alright” or “They tried, but it didn’t work very well.” That’s boring to read. With Frank Rich, you either lived or died. He got behind it and sold it, or he dismantled it, and that makes for lively reading.

John Simon:
He should be absolutely fearless. He should not be afraid that readers will hate him, or that his editor will be uncomfortable with him. That is a very rare thing, partly because reviewers depend on their livelihood. I have great doubts about critics who start out as publicists and still have a publicist’s mentality. I could name names. There is something about a critic being born rather than made. It’s something in your nature, in your perspective, that makes you a critic. It’s innate. It can be furthered. It can be polished. It can be developed. But the germ, the core, has to be innate.

Helen Shaw:
Some of my favorite critics are the ones that get pissed off, like David Cote. When he is angry, David writes some of the best stuff you will ever read. He is so impassioned and thrilling when he is mad. On the other hand, Scott Brown is someone who is never angry, even when he is reviewing something that is absolutely appalling, and can write with crazy, intense generosity.

Don Aucoin:
The ability to be moved is important. Matthew Gilbert, the
Globe
’s TV critic, once told me, “You have to be willing to fall in love.” What he meant was that if something like
The Sopranos
comes on the scene, you can’t be so jaded by all the crap that came before it that you miss its greatness. You have to recognize that something pretty momentous has happened. Without being a pushover, a theater critic has to be receptive to the occasional miracles that can happen.

Howard Shapiro:
You can’t pull punches. This is harder for people who work in regional theater. In New York, you are unlikely to walk down the street and run into the people that you’re reviewing. It’s quite different in Philly. You’re covering stuff from people you see on the street, so you need to have a thick-skinned temperament.

Rob Weinert-Kendt:
I’ve known good critics of all temperaments. The thing that unifies them is courage and independence of thought—to be the kind of person who has the fortitude to go against the grain. A bit of a contrarian streak is helpful. I’m not saying you should be an asshole, but a critic should speak up for their point of view.

Matthew Murray:
Critics must be able to withstand fatigue. Theater reviewing looks easy, but it’s a huge time commitment, especially if you have to hold down another job to make ends meet (as I do, and as many reviewers do). In super-busy months, like November and April, it’s not uncommon for shows to open on top of each other for weeks at a time. As I’m writing this, we just had something like 14 shows open in two weeks, with multiple days where two or three shows opened at once. For organizations that don’t have an army of reviewers at their disposal (meaning, basically, everyone except the
Times
), in these periods, you are seeing and writing about shows during literally every free moment you have, and that can wear on you physically, emotionally, and intellectually, and can cause your personal life and non-theater relationships to suffer.

MATT WINDMAN
: How important is it for a theater critic to be funny?

Michael Dale:
Not at all.

Zachary Stewart:
It’s only important if that critic wants people to read his or her reviews.

Ben Brantley:
It depends on the subject. If you’re writing about a Holocaust drama, you don’t want to make jokes. We’re in a moment in history where you have to be pretty circumspect. Things can come back to bite you. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened to me too often.

Michael Riedel:
It’s important for anybody, anywhere, in any profession, to be funny. Humor is necessary to relieve the general pain and misery of life. But those who try too hard to be funny are excruciating. I can’t bear the
Times
columnist Gail Collins. She thinks she’s so clever and witty, but she’s really just smug. Paul Krugman is unintentionally funny because he’s so serious and angry that you have to laugh when you read him.

Perez Hilton:
I don’t think it’s important at all. I actually find it annoying. A critic isn’t a comedian.

Steven Suskin:
If you write a review in straight and dull prose, it’ll be straight and dull. I realize that there’s somebody reading the review. And if they’re not interested, they’ll just turn to the next page. I try to give them a review they’ll want to read through.

Roma Torre:
A lot of critics think it’s good to be funny, but I don’t think it’s important at all. It goes with the new wave of theater criticism, which can be more about entertaining the readers than providing an intelligent assessment of the work. If I am funny, it’s only because there isn’t much else to say about the show. It’s much easier to crack a joke at the work’s expense than to critique its flaws. On the other hand, if I feel that a show’s creators were way off the mark and ignoring good sense, I may consider that a license to echo their absurdity, but I’m not a comedian by any stretch of the imagination. Chances are that my attempts at being funny would backfire.

Peter Filichia:
I love being funny, but I almost always do it in favor of the production. I don’t like being funny in a nasty way. I am aware that people like reading nasty reviews and seeing other people fail. It’s schadenfreude.

Hilton Als:
When you start thinking about being funny, you’re getting self-conscious, and you’re not really writing.

John Simon:
It helps if you can make your reviews humorous or witty, so long as it’s not at the expense of truth.

Rob Weinert-Kendt:
I used to say that theater criticism is part of the entertainment. It’s part of the experience of the theater. You should enjoy reading it. There’s some theater criticism out there that’s boring as shit to read. But reaching for humor is a bad idea. If you’re not naturally a wit, you shouldn’t try too hard to be funny. Even some critics who are naturally funny, like Scott Brown in
New York
magazine, sometimes push too hard. You feel like you’re watching a standup routine rather than reading a review. They’re not taking the job seriously.