The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (18 page)

Roma Torre:
I hope we don’t get too consumed in it. The nominees might take exception to the contest we’ve created around the awards. A lot of times, we’ve said, “That nominee might have a better chance if he got with the game and promoted himself better.” I don’t think critics are as involved in the contest as theater reporters are. To them, it’s a real story. For critics, it’s a once-a-year guessing game. I make my predictions over who will win, and most of the other critics do the same. I don’t think that’s as much of an issue as the writers who calculate the odds-on favorites, which is sad. I think that could lead to a change in the outcome because voters may look at the calculations and decide to vote for the underdog. It’s a very unhealthy practice.

I think removing journalists as Tony voters was the most ridiculous decision in years. There were many explanations for that. One of the rationales—and this is the most absurd thing to me—was that we couldn’t be completely objective. If we can’t be objective, who else can be among the voting population? The majority of the voters are in the theater community. Many of them are directly or indirectly involved with the nominated shows. We, in the media, don’t have any personal stake in the outcome. So if that was the real reason, I think they made a terrible mistake—and I was absolutely angry about it. And you know what? I think losing a hundred or so journalists as voters has affected the outcome of the major awards.

Michael Dale:
Who would be better qualified to vote for theater awards than someone who has seen everything and has nothing to gain from the results?

Note: In July 2009, the Tony Awards Management Committee announced that the critics, reporters, and other journalists on the Broadway League’s “First Night Press List” (who made up about 100 of the roughly 800 voters for the Tony Awards) were being removed as voters. Without members of the press, the voters for the Tony Awards would consist almost entirely of people working in the theater industry. An email sent to the journalists who had been voters (including myself) noted that, “The Management Committee took into consideration the fact that certain publications and individual critics have historically pursued a policy of abstaining from voting on entertainment awards in general, to avoid any possible conflicts of interest in fulfilling their primary responsibilities as journalists.” The email did not go to on explain how exactly it was a conflict of interest for a critic or any other journalist to vote for the Tony Awards.

Numerous news articles were written about the change, most of which painted the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing (which together run the Tony Awards) in a negative light. A few months later, the roughly two dozen members of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle (which is comprised of many of the most well-known New York theater critics, with the notable exception of the critics from the
New York Times
) were reinstated as Tony voters. In November 2012, I finally became a member of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, and I once again became a Tony voter. I have also been a voting member of the Drama Desk (which considers Broadway, Off Broadway, and even Off Off Broadway shows in its annual slate of awards) for more than a decade.

Adam Feldman:
I don’t think it compromises us professionally. We do end up writing about these awards a lot, but it’s for purely practical purposes. Readers are interested in it. The Tony Awards is a big story. It’s the one time of the year when Broadway becomes a national story, and a lot of people who aren’t usually interested in theater perk up and pay attention. And many of us are theater geeks. We enjoy the horse races. We try to handicap them based on our perceived insight into what the dynamics might be, but that’s just part of the game. I don’t think that compromises the way we write our reviews, and I don’t think it affects how we vote for the awards.

Marilyn Stasio:
Voting for the awards is a waste of time, but I don’t think there’s anything terrible about it, so long as you’re being truthful and you believe in what you’re voting for. It only becomes corrupt if you lie. People do lie, and that drives me nuts. There are angry votes, self-serving votes, vengeful votes, suck-up votes. That kind of thing is awful.

Michael Riedel:
The horse race aspect of anything is fun. Everyone’s thinking, Who’s going to win the Oscar? Who’s going to win the Tony? Who’s going to win the Grammy? Readers like that. People who care about the business want to know what the so-called experts think, or they want to know what the insiders have to say. If journalists care enough to follow the awards, there’s nothing wrong with putting predictions out there. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I think this should win because it’s great” or “I think this is going to win because I’ve talked to a lot of voters and they seem to like it.” That’s just covering the business.

MATT WINDMAN
: Is it all right, or perhaps even preferable, for a theater critic to also write news, feature articles, and interviews?

Michael Riedel:
The
New York Times
is unique in the respect that it doesn’t believe in its theater critics also being reporters. It has the resources to be able to hire both critics and reporters, but most papers don’t have those resources. If you go back and look at the
Washington Post
when David Richards was there, he would do the Sunday interview with the star of the big new show coming to Washington, and then he’d review the show the following Wednesday. Elliot Norton also did that at the
Herald
, and so did Kevin Kelly at the
Globe
. That was always the case. The theater people had to let the critic do the interview because they needed the publicity, and they had to suck it up if the critic gave them a bad review. By the same token, the critic had to realize that just as much as they enjoyed interviewing the actor or playwright or director, if that person’s work wasn’t very good, they’ve got to put on a different hat and sock it to them in the review. That’s the nature of the job.

Charles Isherwood:
It can get compromising to get to know people—even on the level of doing an interview. Once you’ve met and spent some time with these people, you’re susceptible to a certain feeling of community. The next time they come before you as a critic, it can be hard to be as objective as you need to be—but I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem. It’s all about having integrity. If you have integrity, you can interview somebody one week and pan them the next. It’s hard, but that’s what you need to do. Most theater writers now have to do a little of both. That’s only going to be more of the case as the newspaper industry keeps contracting.

Brian Lipton:
The good old days of being on only one side of the fence—where a reviewer never spoke to the people in the business for the sake of objectivity—are over. To make a living, I often have to review people who I’ve interviewed and that I know socially, and I’m not the kind of person who enjoys hurting people’s feelings. I believe that my first responsibility is to the reader, so I never want to lie, but sometimes you have to read between the lines of what I write.

Ben Brantley:
I admire the critics who do both tremendously. Peter Marks at the
Washington Post
does it brilliantly, and he is able to keep a sense of distance in all cases. I remember when Hedy Weiss at the
Chicago Sun-Times
was doing theater and dance reviews and also writing every feature that the paper ran on the same subjects. To me, that is staggering. Hats off to them.

Alexis Soloski:
Sometimes you get into an ethically sticky situation, but I love it doing profiles. I like having the opportunity to speak with people, especially when I’m enthusiastic about their work. Having that hour-long conversation is wonderful. I can just fall in love with the person. The
Voice
has always been a little freewheeling, in the sense that sometimes I was still able to review a show even after I wrote a profile on someone involved in it. The
Times
does not feel that way. I understand their logic because you do have to pull back after having made a personal connection, even at a casual level, but I’m certainly professional enough to do that. I recently did a profile on playwright Will Eno, and I enjoyed my conversation with him tremendously, but that did not prevent me from giving a pretty lukewarm review of his play
Open House
.

Zachary Stewart:
It’s always better to know more about how the sausage is made, provided the critic can separate any affection he or she develops for the subject of those features from honest criticism.

Chris Jones:
Except for a few publications in New York, all of us meet artists. We’re not just critics. In some ways, it helps because we get to know more. I don’t think I could do my job and never talk to an artist. I recognize and respect people who attempt to not do that, but that doesn’t really work for me.

Christine Dolen:
Besides the
New York Times
and a couple of other publications, most theater critics (if they’re lucky enough to have full-time jobs) are doing all of the above. With the contraction of journalism and shrinking staff sizes, everybody is expected to do more. I write theater news and features, and I have a blog. As a critic, you set all that aside when you see a piece of theater, and you just react to what you see in front of you.

David Cote:
If the publication can’t afford to have separate critics, then you have to look at the glass-half-full side of it and hope that critics will be informed by a greater knowledge of the craft. By talking to playwrights, directors, and actors, you get more of a sense of what they are trying to accomplish. But the glass is half empty, and you could become overly compromised in your criticism. It is problematic, but I talk to critics across the country and many of them wear multiple hats. To be perfectly honest, I do much less reporting than I used to. The job has become more about blog posts, lists of things, and getting people to click on links.

Elysa Gardner:
Being both a critic and a reporter is the toughest part of the job. I have been in the position of interviewing somebody and then seeing them in a play, or vice versa. Whenever I don’t have to do that, I’m grateful. In one of those situations (where you have to put on one hat for one assignment, and a different hat for another), you try to distinguish them as much as you can. There are times when I interviewed people and felt like I got insight into a play or a performance. When I had the great privilege of interviewing August Wilson a few times, I got glimpses of the incredible compassion, humanity, and conviction that informs his work—but I’m not fooling myself into thinking I’m developing real friendships.

Michael Schulman:
John Lahr has spearheaded a combination of profiling and critiquing. He’s written a bunch of pieces that explore the artists’ intentions with criticism. The
Times
certainly doesn’t do that. It has very strict ethics rules, and that’s probably for the best considering its role in the world.

Adam Feldman:
At
Time Out
, there are two of us on staff (David Cote and me) plus freelancers. As a general rule, if we run a feature about a show, we try not to have the person who writes the feature also write the review.

Jason Zinoman:
I’ve always been both a reporter and a critic. I’ve found that being a reporter can make you a better critic because the first job of a critic is to figure out what a show’s artistic intent is, and actually knowing artists helps with figuring that out. There are a lot of critics, especially in television and film, who have done no reporting. If they had reporting experience, they would have a better understanding of the artistic process.

Terry Teachout:
It’s very problematic, and that’s why I don’t do it for the
Wall Street Journal
. The problem is obvious: It is not easy to write objective criticism if you’re also covering institutions as a reporter. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to be done about it in the real world of journalism.

Matthew Murray:
It’s probably not ideal, but this issue is pretty low on the list of things to be concerned about.

Richard Zoglin:
It’s doable, but it is a challenge. The minute you meet someone in the theater—and they’re usually very charming—you automatically want to like their stuff.

David Sheward:
In my experience, it’s problematic to do both reporting and reviews. In feature writing, you’re letting someone else say, “This is what the show is about.” In a review, you’re saying, “This is what I think about the show.” I want to come to the show as the audience does. The experience has to be self-explanatory. I have to be able to get the show without an explanation from the practitioners.

Rob Weinert-Kendt:
When you write previews and features, as I do, you start to feel like a PR person. You’re essentially writing PR. You publish it, and it gets people to buy tickets, and you feel like you’re part of the publicity team, and you are, but I hope I bring my critical acumen into those pieces.

Howard Shapiro:
I’ve found that doing both is difficult, especially when it’s a show that doesn’t work. Spending that kind of time with a person makes you a fan. Recently, I was going to review Colin Quinn’s one-man show
Unconstitutional
, which he’s taken on tour. The radio station that I work for asked me to interview Quinn about how he came up with the show on the air. I said, “I’d be happy to. But if I do that, I don’t want to review it, too.” Not mixing the advance work on a show with the review is a cleaner way of doing journalism, but I also realize that it’s a luxury that a lot of publications and stations can’t afford.

Frank Rizzo:
Before I started reviewing, it was an ideal situation: I would do the advance pieces, and someone else would write the reviews. Once you start reviewing as well, it becomes more difficult. Sometimes you have this wonderful, charming, fantastic interview with an actor, and then you see the show, and the actor is not very good, or miscast, or whatever. But you have to be honest. At the end of the day, the only thing you have is the trust of your readership that you’re telling it straight.