The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (17 page)

The obvious examples of unethical behavior are obvious because they are the right examples. You don’t write about people with whom you have outside relationships. It’s never a good idea to write about friends for all sorts of reasons, one of which is you usually can’t please them. If you have or ever had a professional or fiduciary relationship with someone involved in a production, at the very least, you have an obligation to disclose it to your editors.

Michael Riedel:
If we could take bribes, I would have a house in Nantucket and wouldn’t have to use my sister’s house—though I suppose taking a bribe might not be such a good thing. But back in the day, it was standard procedure. If you look at the history of the Paris Opera House, all of the critics were on the payroll of the various singers. In fact, critics led claques that were paid for by the singers. A singer would pay for a critic to lead a claque. That’s where the word comes from. A claque is a group of people who would cheer for who the singer who was paying them and boo the singer who wasn’t. Sadly, I don’t think they have that kind of money anymore. Maybe Hugh Jackman does, but everybody already likes Hugh Jackman.

Zachary Stewart:
Taking money in exchange for positive coverage or allowing personal or business relationships to influence coverage. This includes so-called “sponsored content.”

Michael Sommers:
You should be the perfect theatergoer. I’ve seen bad manners among critics. I’ve seen them come in late. I’ve seen them come in having had too many cocktails. That’s not unethical, but it is bad behavior. The
New York Times
is extremely strict. If I’m dying, I can’t accept a glass of water from anybody in the theater.

Howard Shapiro:
When I’m addressing a group of audience members, they always ask if I’ve ever been offered a bribe, but that’s never happened.

Robert Feldberg:
If you become friends with someone in the theater, you shouldn’t be reviewing their work. I wouldn’t say I’m friends with the people I’ve interviewed and chatted with, so I have no compunction about reviewing them. Frank Rich was a very close friend of Wendy Wasserstein, so he never reviewed her plays. Everybody knew that, and it was fine.

Helen Shaw:
When I was on the Obies committee, I was told (though I think this was tongue-in-cheek) that the standard for a conflict of interest is whether you slept with the person. Mine is that I can’t have been invited to their birthday party. My sister is a sound designer. She works all the time, and I won’t review any of her work.

Michael Schulman:
When I graduated from Yale, there was this whole sort of Yale theater mafia that I was a part of. For instance, I went to college with Alex Timbers, who’s now a major Broadway director. I would never review something that he directed. I even acted in one of his early shows.

Peter Marks:
On a couple of occasions, I have reviewed work by people I taught at George Washington University. My relationship with them was not one of friendship, but I always try to disclose if I am writing about somebody I’ve had in a class because it’s a different kind of relationship, and you don’t want there to be a perception that the person had a leg up.

David Cote:
You shouldn’t harp on the looks of actors. I think it’s unethical to verbally caricature an actor for being too fat or too thin or homely, or to overpraise them if you find them irresistibly sexy. If you believe the actor is not attractive enough for the role (or young enough, or what have you), you can say that, but it’s always said in a subjective capacity, with full understanding that theater is, you know, make believe. There are no rules about this stuff. You must ask yourself, “Is this appropriate?”

John Simon:
There was a very famous case at the
Times
in the music field where someone quite well-known reviewed something without having seen it. That is totally unacceptable.

Michael Sommers:
There are one or two critics who got into trouble for selling their second press ticket on the street outside the theater. Critics typically get two complimentary tickets to a show from press agents, and those critics hawked and sold their extra tickets for a profit.

Jesse Green:
The obvious example is taking any kind of meaningful payment from someone who stands to benefit from a good review. That sounds simple, but it’s a big gray area because we’re all getting our tickets for free. While I was at the
Times
, there was a brouhaha about the supposed discovery that critics and reporters were taking free theater tickets from press agents. What a scandal! It was pointed out that if they didn’t take the free tickets, it would add $10,000 to $20,000 a year to the cost of covering shows for each writer, and then taking the free tickets miraculously became acceptable.

We all live with that inconsistency. We’re getting these incredibly valuable free tickets. They’re the best seats in the house. That does predispose us to think more positively about shows—not necessarily individual shows, but the whole experience of theatergoing. If the show is bad, you don’t feel like you wasted money that you worked really hard to earn. To the extent that we are consumer advocates, that’s a problem.

Michael Sommers:
Canadian tourism groups offer subsidies for transportation and lodging for critics to go out there and write about the Shaw Festival and the Stratford Festival. I used to accept that, but it didn’t impact what I wrote about those shows. It was the same as getting press tickets. It’s just the way of doing things.

Gordon Cox:
Having an agenda of any kind—like thinking, I don’t like this theater company, so I’m going to give their production a bad review.

Hilton Als:
Using criticism for your own ends. Some people want to become famous through criticism in order to do other things. I don’t think you should use criticism for anything other than what it is.

John Simon:
Promoting any kind of cause is unethical. Let’s say there’s a play about a born-again Christian that’s worthless, but you give it a good review anyway because you’re a born-again Christian. That would be totally unethical.

Howard Shapiro:
It’s not kosher to call up a director and ask the director to explain what he or she was trying to do in a particular show. Some critics have done that. The director’s intent doesn’t matter—it’s the outcome that matters. That’s why you’re there. You don’t want to have that kind of inside knowledge when you’re making a judgment about a piece. I have also seen what I consider to be bad ethics from theater artists who don’t understand that it’s wrong to go critic shopping in a city. It’s not a good idea to get in front of an audience, point to a critic sitting there, and claim that the critic is ruining the theater in the city. I’ve seen an instance of that sort of thing in Philly.

Michael Musto:
Putting all your weight behind a play just so you can claim that it’s your play if it wins the Tony.

Gordon Cox:
Giving a production a rave as a sort of power play. Without naming names, one can think of a kind of pissing match between two critics of the same paper vying for a position of dominance in terms of the work that they review.

Michael Schulman:
I don’t know if this is unethical or just tacky, but there’s a tendency for people to wait and see what other people are saying before they crystallize what they think about a show, especially if a deadline allows it. You wait to see what the
Times
thinks, or what other people you respect have to say. You need to avoid letting other people’s opinions affect your own.

Chris Jones:
I try not to be barbarically mean just for the sake of it. At the paper, we have a policy of not causing intentional distress. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t judge a work harshly if it’s a poor work, but you shouldn’t cause intentional distress.

Scott Brown:
We’re all guilty of this, but it is probably malpractice to take too much glee in wrecking something. There is a place for the earth-scorching pan, but I think snark has been retailed so widely and perniciously that it’s become this fog of contempt. I don’t think you’re serving anybody well by living in that cloud. Many critics get a bum rap because on the occasions that they are snarky, it stands out because people love reading those kinds of reviews.

Ben Brantley:
Not to name names, but I know some prominent theater critics who’ve reviewed shows without having seen them. I think that’s abominable.

Steven Suskin:
I’ve seen critics walk out of shows. If they admit that they walked out when they write the review, that’s fine. But if they don’t mention that they walked out, that’s probably unethical.

Chris Jones:
There is a great tradition of critics like Claudia Cassidy walking out of a show at intermission and declaring it proudly in the review, so maybe it’s not so bad to do that, but I never leave.

Alexis Soloski:
If I’m reviewing a show, even if it’s terrible, I’ll see it through. I’ll say to my guest, “Please go. I’m obligated to stay, but wouldn’t you be much happier if you left?” But if I’m there just for fun, and if I’m not having any fun, I’ll leave at intermission.

Frank Scheck:
I will walk out on a show and not write about it. But if you’re going to write about it, you have an obligation to stay—unless it’s like the Bataan Death March, it’s eight hours, and it’s not going to enhance your appreciation of it.

Michael Musto:
I think I’ve only walked out three times in my life. One of the times was with two of the greatest actors in the world, Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren, in
Dance of Death
. They were positioned on opposite sides of the stage, in some kind of heavy-handed symbolism of their separation. I just thought it was torture. Another time, it was one of those shows where it’s like, “I’m an old bag telling you my life story, and nothing is going to be shown or actually happen. I’m just going to tell you my life story.”

Perez Hilton:
I’ve walked out of shows. I almost walked out at
Holler If You Hear Me
, the Tupac Shakur musical. I wouldn’t review a show if I walked out at intermission, but I’m also not going to be held prisoner by an awful theatergoing experience. I walked out of
We Will Rock You
, perhaps the worst show in the history of musical theater, before intermission. I love Queen and their music, but I literally felt like the show was killing my brain cells. It has the stupidest book ever. It’s like
Footloose
set in the future—only worse.

Peter Filichia:
I don’t think there’s ever been a period in my life where I’ve been less inclined to walk out of a show. I have statistics about this. I walked out a lot when I was married because my wife wanted to leave so often, and we only had one car. Nowadays, I’ll walk out if I feel a show is really hopeless, but that only happens about one percent of the time. There are times where I’ll see a show and, as time goes by, I get more interested in it.

Michael Riedel:
Walking out shows a lack of respect for the people putting on the show. However, I won’t go to a show if I know it’s going to be a dog—unless it’s going to be really horrible and sort of campy, like
Spider-Man
or something like that. Then I’d want to describe how horrible it is in my column. But there’s no reason for me to go see something like
The Bridges of Madison County
. There’s nothing interesting happening behind the scenes that I can write about. It’s also not to my taste. More and more, they are putting on shows that are not for me. I’m not interested in sitting in a room full of little kids through a dopey, stupid, kiddy musical. I’m also not interested in harlequin romance stuff for the middle-aged ladies, and they’re the bulk of the theater audience.

Terry Teachout:
If I walked out of a New York show, I’d be on “Page Six” the next morning. I once walked out of a regional production, but I won’t tell you what or where it was. I just couldn’t take another minute of it. Experience has taught me that you can change your mind about a show after intermission. One play about which I completely changed my mind about after intermission was Martin McDonagh’s
The Pillowman
. At intermission, I thought, This just isn’t working at all. And if I had left then, I would have given it a bad review.

MATT WINDMAN
: Is it problematic for critics to be paying attention to, writing about, and voting for the various theater awards that are given out each year?

Zachary Stewart:
It can be, especially when attention to those awards overshadows the actual work.

Elysa Gardner:
The public gets caught up in the awards, and so does the media.

Richard Zoglin:
The focus on the Oscars is ridiculously out of proportion, and the same goes for the Tonys. I’m always suggesting things to review, to which my editors say yes or no, and then they come to me each year and say, “You’ve got to do something on the Tonys.” That means more to them than anything else. As far as the other theater awards, I don’t mind that they exist, but there are a lot of them, and they don’t mean much to me. I do think the critics should vote for the Tonys. As for the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, it’s good to have those awards, but the annual meeting where we vote on the awards is not my favorite afternoon of the year.

Helen Shaw:
I don’t mind the razzle-dazzle. Any attention to the theater is good attention. All theater is a gateway drug for other theater. My favorite show when I was 12 years old was
Phantom of the Opera
. I sang every song at the top of my lungs on every single car trip. Now my taste could not be farther from
Phantom of the Opera
. If people get excited about the Tonys, and if they find the competition thrilling, those things will lead them to other things.

Leonard Jacobs:
I totally support critics being involved with any kind of award. Critics have a lousy reputation because we’re the bearers of bad news, so it’s important for critics to encourage and applaud in a very public way, if they can.