The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (16 page)

Roma Torre:
I think you have to remain on the outside. I often get asked to do events, and I mostly say no because I don’t want to get too close. There are some performers who regard me as a friend, but I have to keep my distance. It’s unfortunate because these are wonderful people. They do great work, and I admire them tremendously, but I can’t get too close.

For 17 years, I have done red carpet shows, mostly for the Tony Awards. But this year, I decided it was too compromising for me to continue doing that. I’m always living in fear that one of the people who I reviewed unfavorably is going to throw a pie in my face on the red carpet. It’s too much of a professional conflict for me to stand there making nice and joking around with these people, who I may not have said very nice things about in a review. Theater people have thin skin for the most part, and they remember everything you said, including the negative comments. So I thought, I can’t do this anymore. It’s just too uncomfortable and awkward. I am pulling myself even further away these days. It just has to be that way.

Michael Musto:
A critic is definitely part of it, but on the outside. They can’t get too pulled into the middle. The role of a critic is to sit back and evaluate. Some residual glitter does fall on your shoulder. You are an exciting part of the theater world, but you always have to remind yourself that you’re the person taking it in. You’re not center stage. You’re fifth row center.

Rob Weinert-Kendt:
The critic is part of the theater community, but he is the annoying guy at the party who’s telling everybody, “You look like shit.” He’s the kind of person it might be hard to be friends with all the time, but he’s the kind of person you need. You need a truth teller. The problem is in confusing him with an authority. He’s not the authority, but he’s the one who’s going to tell you what he really thinks, and I think there’s value in his subjective opinions. He’s not objective. He’s not standing on some mountain, looking down. He’s in the mix of everything. Whether you like him or not, you can trust him to say what he thinks. There’s a huge value in that, and the theater community could definitely use more people who will tell the truth.

Zachary Stewart:
He’s the weird kid sitting by himself at lunch. He has no tribe, but he’s in the same physical space, and his observations about everyone else are usually the most on-point because of his outsider status.

Don Aucoin:
I see myself as a journalist who’s reporting on the theater community, writing reviews, writing think pieces, and generally assessing the work. I didn’t see myself as part of the political community when I covered politics. I didn’t see myself as part of the TV community when I was a TV critic. That being said, I understand that nobody’s doing theater for the money. Theater people often make enormous personal sacrifices to do it. That matters a lot in terms of my fundamental respect for them, but it doesn’t make me a part of the theater community.

Robert Faires:
Every critic gets to choose the amount of distance he or she wants between himself and the artists who are working onstage. However, when we think about the ecology of what’s taking place, I consider the audience to be a part of the theater community. Without the audience, there’s an element missing to the artist’s work, and the critic is a part of the audience. In some ways, the critic is the mediator between the audience and the artist. Also, I know for a fact that theater artists are reading me and paying attention to me.

For as long as I’ve been doing this, there have always been avenues for artists to interact with critics, to be friends with critics, and to become critics themselves. There have been a number of critics who started out as artists, decided to be critics for a while, and then became artists again. You’ll find very few critics who erect a barrier between themselves and the artists, and you’ll find very few artists who aren’t willing to interact directly with critics on a very personal level.

Elysa Gardner:
I’m certainly not part of the theater community. You can have a nice repartee with someone, but you don’t become buddies with a playwright or actor, no matter how many times you interview them. You can’t really be part of the community if you are observing it from the outside, but we are constantly absorbed in the theater, trying to understand it and appreciate it.

Scott Brown:
Critics are part of the theater to a certain extent. The critic is always going to be the cranky old man who lives at the end of the community, in a house nobody wants to walk by, but there is a connection there. In some ways, it’s a very personal connection. Even people who say they don’t read the reviews really do read them because it’s irresistible. It’s human nature. They get to know the critics not as people but through their work, which gives them a distorted understanding of who the critics are. Likewise, the critic gets to know a distorted version of who an actor, director, or playwright is because they’re meeting them through their work. But even with these unusual misunderstandings and misapprehensions, they do get to know each other. There’s an intimacy there.

Jason Zinoman:
Some people will say that you’re a part of the theater community and mean it as a compliment. I appreciate where they’re coming from, but I don’t think I’m really a part of it. I see myself as a sort of satellite.

Adam Feldman:
There are different approaches to this. Some critics make a strong dividing line between them and the entire theater community to protect themselves from contamination, from possible conflicts that might arise, from knowing too much about artists or groups within the theater community. I understand that approach, but I don’t happen to share it. I have many friends in the theater world. I try to know as much as I can about what’s going on in it, and I try to remain as collegial as possible. I think having greater insight into the creative side makes me a better critic. It makes me smarter about what I’m seeing. It also disinclines me from being simply mean.

Historically, for many people on the creative side, their relationship with critics has been seen as antagonistic, but I try not to think that way. I’m often in social situations with people who are doing work that I have written about, or that I may write about in the future. I trust that they understand the way the game works, and the fact that if I say hello to them at a party, it does not mean I won’t write honestly about their work in the future. If I’m close friends with someone, then of course I won’t review their work, but I review work all the time of people I’ve had interactions with, and sometimes I review it negatively. That’s my job. I have been unfriended on
Facebook
by people after writing reviews of their work that they were not happy with. I can’t blame them. I certainly don’t like being criticized in public.

Peter Marks:
I am a member of the journalism community, which is separate from the theater community. It just so happens that the people who care most about what I write are the people I’m directing my words to the least: the theater community. Having said that, being able to move within the community as a reporter and a critic is useful. I do think there’s a problem with critics who think they’re part of the community. Then you’re limiting your voice, and the reader can tell the difference at some level. They can discern if your writing seems to be for that group of people. They’ll feel like it’s not for them. Then you might as well be a dramaturg or a publicist.

Howard Shapiro:
The critic is not in the theater community. Rather, the theater critic is
of
the theater community. That’s something that I learned from a critic named Clifford A. Ridley, who was the critic for many years of the
National Observer
and then became the theater critic at the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. He was a journalist foremost. I’m aware of the symbiosis between critics and theater artists. But if I walk into a show worrying about the theater’s finances or the actors’ feelings, I can’t do my job. We’ve all been at opening nights when the house is papered. That papered house includes people who are in the theater community. Critics know that they can disregard almost any reaction that those people have because they’re friends with those onstage, and my role isn’t to be a friend.

John Lahr:
There is a widely-held view that critics should not mix with or know the people who are making the art in any way. I think that is a really retrograde position that enforces ignorance. The only critics who have value are those who involve themselves in the art. I can easily justify that by naming all the people who you might say were really great or significant theater critics: Stark Young, Robert Brustein, Harold Clurman, Eric Bentley, Kenneth Tynan, Bernard Shaw. The people we read decades down the line are those who worked both sides of the street. All the others don’t have a smack of the life of the theater, no matter how slickly they write.

Jesse Oxfeld:
I like to have a drink and schmooze, and I’m perfectly happy to sit in bars adjacent to theaters and chat up people who may be part of the theater community. I sort of inject myself in that way. But ultimately, a critic is not a part of it. If you accept the distinction of a critic versus a reviewer (where a critic is someone who really is engaged in the art form), then maybe the critic is part of the community, whereas a reviewer takes on himself a certain journalistic impartiality.

Michael Riedel:
I’m totally a part of it. The columnists have always been a part of it because we draw attention to it. I don’t want to be a theater critic. I have no interest in going to a zillion plays and sitting in the dark and then rushing home to write a book report. I much prefer to be part of the theater world—hanging out with people, gossiping and swapping stories, and finding out what’s going on.

Jesse Green:
Criticism is a form of writing. It’s not a form of theater. A sad delusion that I have often fallen prey to is that writing about the theater makes me a part of the theater and can substitute for having a life in the theater, which is a choice I might have made and didn’t. Criticism makes up for that in only a marginal way. You can be part of the discussion, but only from the sidelines.

Peter Filichia:
I know that a lot of critics avoid getting to know people who work in the industry. I take my cue from Stephen Sondheim and Frank Rich. Sondheim helped Frank Rich to become a major theater critic because of a review he wrote of
Follies
in the
Harvard Crimson
in 1971. Ten years later, Rich nailed Sondheim to a cross when reviewing
Merrily We Roll Along
. The fact that they were friends had nothing to do with anything. Recently, the artistic director of a New Jersey theater got married and invited me to the wedding. I didn’t go because that would be getting a little too close. Still, I found it very interesting that they wanted me there.

Robert Hurwitt:
There have always been critics who’ve gotten too familiar with the people they’re covering. George Jean Nathan was famous for his interactions with theater people, both in terms of chasing chorus girls and encouraging playwrights like Tennessee Williams. I think it was Nathan who advised Williams to turn his short story into a play, which became
The Glass Menagerie
. John Lahr carries on that tradition in the way he writes criticism, and he does it very well.

When you’re working in a smaller theater community, it’s virtually impossible to maintain that kind of distance. Before I began writing criticism, I was managing a theater and acting. My stance as a critic always was, and still is, to have as much of an open door as I possibly can. When people want to sit down and talk, I try to make the time to grab coffee with them.

Thom Geier:
We’re the wallflowers off to the side at the party. We live under the same roof, but we have to be off to the side. If the spotlight is on us, then we’re not doing our job as critics. We’re not the performers. We can try to elevate criticism to the level of performance, and maybe get some refractory glow off the spotlight, but ultimately, the real performers are the people onstage, the ones whose work we’re commenting on.

MATT WINDMAN
: What constitutes unethical behavior for a theater critic?

Linda Winer:
Oscar Wilde said, “I hear critics can be bought. From the looks of them, they can’t be very expensive.”

Marilyn Stasio:
It’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? Unethical is unethical. I’m rather hardnosed about that. There’s nothing to think about. I know what’s right and what’s wrong. The important thing is to write with no ulterior motives.

Michael Dale:
Anything that keeps critics from writing honest opinions.

Peter Marks:
It’s actually very hard for a theater critic to be unethical because someone’s going to call you on it. You’re in a fish bowl. People are watching you all the time. I try to never even close my eyes at the theater because I’m afraid someone is going to accuse me of falling asleep—and I have seen critics fall asleep at the theater. I’ve seen some fall asleep this year alone. To me, that is more of a breach than some other things.

My code of ethics is what I bring to the theater each time I see a play. I come in as an honest broker. I try to leave any personal feelings I have about people outside the room. It’s about me and that production—and that’s hard for some people to understand. They think you’re bearing grudges, settling scores, and getting even with people. They like to assign those kinds of motives because sometimes that’s easier to digest than the thought that a play just isn’t very good.

Terry Teachout:
Whenever I teach a course on theater criticism, I tell my students that rule number one is to not write about anyone you’re having sex with. If you construe that a little bit more widely, that’s valuable, too. But if you take it too literally, you become a kind of eunuch who has no contact with the outside world of theater, or whatever medium you happen to be writing about, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.