The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (21 page)

John Lahr:
I don’t just pop out a review. That’s typing, not writing. The whole point of criticism is to meet the energy of the artist with an eloquence and elegance of your own. One of the problems with most criticism is that it’s written too quickly. There’s not enough judiciousness in the analysis. The people we call critics have the luxury of more time to write. I would take three days to write a review for the
New Yorker
.

Linda Winer:
My husband says, “Linda does her best work between late and too late.” I have editors that say, “Linda is a heat-seeking missile.” No matter how much time I have, I’m always pushing the deadline because I need the adrenaline. I think you need to have a gut reaction, and then you can do the analysis. The bad times are when nothing’s happening—when you sit there and you’re not having any kind of passionate response. The flops are the easiest shows to write about. The hits are the second easiest. The loving and the hating bring out passion. But most shows, like most of life, fall somewhere in between. The hardest part of the job, the challenge of the job, is the mixed review—the “yes, but” and the “no, but.” The challenge is to have mixed emotions without sounding confused. We have mixed emotions about almost everything, don’t we? I work a lot on finding the middle voice. It’s so tempting to write only raves and pans, which are also the things that get the most attention.

Michael Sommers:
It takes me about two to three hours to write a 500 to 750-word review. It also depends on what the deadlines are. I don’t write a review until at least the morning after I see the show. I could even let it go for two or three days. Sometimes shows stack up. I don’t have to tell you what it’s like in April, when we’re seeing 35 shows in 30 days. Trying to work out when you’re going to see each play is like a jigsaw puzzle.

Peter Marks:
In D.C., critics attend shows on press night. Some companies in D.C. have used the term opening night to mean the first preview performance, while the critics attend what they call press night, which is held later on. I attend as many press nights as I can. I write the next morning, and then it’s posted online by 2 p.m. Except in rare circumstances, there are no embargoes on publishing reviews in D.C. In New York, a critic might attend a preview performance but won’t be able to publish the review until three or four days later after its opening night performance.

A straight pan or rave will probably take a couple of hours to write. A more nuanced, mixed review could take another hour. I can’t write the next paragraph of a review until the paragraph before it is perfect in my mind, so I’m editing as I go through it. Then I will read and reread and talk the review out loud to myself. I’ll read through it at least twice for mistakes and errors. The pace of things has become so insane that there isn’t a lot of time for back-and-forth with my editors. Most of the time, my reviews are published pretty much intact. Sometimes the copy desk has a couple of questions, often about spelling. They’re rarely about structure and never about point of view, which is ideal.

Robert Feldberg:
I like to type out the first sentence or paragraph of the review before I go to sleep. I write the rest the next day or the day after, depending on when my deadline is. While you’re waiting, the review sort of marinates. I will typically do a rough draft to get all of my ideas out. It’s much easier to go back and rewrite and edit when you already have something on the screen. The most basic thing is just getting all of your thoughts out and not worrying about the writing so much. I’ll go over it a second time and put it into shape, and then I’ll give it a third and final reading.

Robert Hurwitt:
Immediately after seeing a show, I head back to the office. Before I get there, I begin to formulate how I’m going to approach the review. Once I figure out what my lead is, I’ve pretty much figured out the whole structure of the review. I also try to decide which “Little Man” rating I’m going to give. Once I’m at the office, I see how much space has been allotted to me. Then I go out for a smoke. Because of the space limitations, I have to decide what I’ll be able to write about and what I’ll have to leave out.

I write the lead, and then I write the last sentence of the review, and then I write the body. I might have to change the last sentence later on. Sometimes when I’m halfway through the review, I’ll go back and change the “Little Man” rating because I’ve talked myself into putting it up or down by one. Once I finish the review, I go back over it and cut the number of lines that have to be cut to adhere to the space restrictions. I usually go over anywhere from two to 30 lines. I check all the names because no one else at the paper is going to pick up on the fact that I misspelled someone’s name.

Terry Teachout:
Sometimes I write about a regional show a couple of weeks after it opens. I’ll write about a Broadway show the morning after I see it, but that’s not a matter of preference. It’s just what I have to do. It takes three or four hours to write the column. I don’t really think in terms of an initial draft, and I don’t think most people do anymore in the age of word processors. To me, the editing is a continuous process. At some point, at the end of the process, I hear the click in my head, and I know I’m where I want to be, and I send it in.

Matthew Murray:
I generally write in a linear fashion. I have to build reviews from A to Z. My brain just doesn’t deal well with jumping all over the place. I start with the first paragraph and end with the last paragraph, whereas some people may start at the end or transcribe their notes and cobble those together into a review. I’ll spend as much time as is absolutely necessary getting the first paragraph to say exactly what I want, and sometimes that can be a really long time, and then the rest of it more or less flows for me.

Hilton Als:
I write a little sentence before I go to sleep. I dig in the next day. It’s really about recalling the experience and finding the language to describe it.

Michael Riedel:
In order to write my column, I talk to the people I know in the theater business and just say, “What’s going on? What’s the latest?” I meet people for drinks, lunch, or dinner. I talk to people on the phone. We text and email a lot now. I try to get a sense of what the industry is thinking and talking about. Whatever I find the most interesting or entertaining is what I use in the column. I write pretty quickly. I could write the column in whatever time you give me. If you give me two hours, I’ll take two hours. If you give me 10 minutes, I’ll take 10 minutes. That’s just the nature of journalism. Work expands or contracts based on the time you’re allotted, but the thinking and the talking and the reporting go on all the time. I’m always talking to somebody in the theater about stuff. Most of my friends are in the theater, and most of the people I hang out with are theater people. We’re always talking about what’s going on in the theater. It’s an ongoing conversation about the business.

MATT WINDMAN
: What is your word count for a typical review?

Alexis Soloski:
I’ve written 210 words. I’ve written 1,000 words. My standard is 575 words. Writing short reviews is a challenge. It’s like finger exercises for the piano. You’re distilling ideas and opinions into an incredibly short form.

Hilton Als:
My standard review is about 1,500 words.

Zachary Stewart:
750 to 900 words.

Roma Torre:
In television, we have a very hard two-minute limit for a review. I get grief for going even a second over that. But a lot of shows are very big and complex, and you can’t really do justice to them in just two minutes. Also, I have to write to and coordinate with the images that are provided to me, whether it’s video footage or still photos. Often, I don’t get the visuals early on, so I’m forced to rewrite the entire review later to match the visuals. On the Internet, I can elaborate and throw more things into the review, but that’s twice as much work for me because then I have to reedit the review.

Matthew Murray:
I don’t have hard-and-fast word count restrictions in the way a lot of the print folks do, but I use soft word caps to keep myself from going on and on and on, as I would otherwise do.

Andy Propst:
In my career, I’ve been asked to do everything from 175 to 1,500 words. I’m comfortable with 1,000 words. I think that is a decent length.

Chris Jones:
I write what I write. My typical review is somewhere around 700 to 800 words. I just write it, and they usually find a way to fit it in. Sometimes I go much longer than that, like 1,500 or 2,000 words, but that’s rare. Seven hundred to 800 words is ideal for the life I have, which is seeing a play every day. I don’t think I could write more than that every day. It would be different if I was only reviewing eight shows a year. Also, there are a lot of shows that you don’t need a lot of space for because they don’t merit it. There are other shows that I could go on and on about, but the reality is that people only have the tolerance to read so much. And the longer the review, the harder it is to draw people through it, so I try to write only what I think it needs.

David Cote:
The reviews in print are about 200 to 400 words. They are painfully short. We write more for online and then cut for print.

Elisabeth Vincentelli:
My reviews are between 350 and 600 words, depending on the show and its star wattage. I’m very good at being on target in terms of word count. The
Times
reviews can be very long. Sometimes it’s great to have all that space, and sometimes it’s terrible. I have about a third of the space they have, so I have to be economical, and I enjoy that challenge.

Elysa Gardner:
Typically, it’s around 500 words. It’s good in the sense that you can’t be self-indulgent. You don’t get into the stuff where it’s as much about the critic as it is about the production. Obviously, there are times when I want more space, and I negotiate with my editors for that. Would I want to review a major production in two paragraphs? I have not been asked to do that, but I suppose that I could.

Frank Scheck:
At the
Post
, if you go over 300 words, you’re going to get cut unless it’s a major show. That’s unfortunate because it restricts your ability to go very deeply into a production. On the other hand, it does enforce a certain discipline that I don’t think is bad in a lot of cases. It also depends on the show. If you’re reviewing a frothy musical or some silly, commercial piece, 300 words is usually more than enough. If you’re reviewing a thoughtful play that delves into a lot of issues, it hurts to be limited in that way.

Rob Weinert-Kendt:
If I’ve got more space, I usually take more time to get to the point. If I’ve got less space, I have to really get to the point quickly.

Adam Feldman:
The reviews at
Time Out
are very short, which is a specific kind of challenge. You have to compress a whole lot of material into a very small space, usually two or three paragraphs, though we can write longer versions online. You want to get in a basic description of the show. You want to give an opinion on the show. You also want to get in some writing of your own to make it entertaining and interesting to read. That can be a real challenge, and so it becomes a miniaturist art. It’s about learning ways in which you can fit in as much as possible.

John Lahr:
When I began to write for the
New Yorker
, my pieces were 2,500 to 2,700 words long, which is quite a lot of space to fill. By the end, my pieces were 1,400 words, which meant I had to do it in a shorthand that I couldn’t handle, though the intention was there.

Linda Winer:
I now write my reviews at 375 words. It’s very hard to say a lot with little space.

Michael Riedel:
There’s a feeling among editors that people don’t want to read long articles. When I started out, I had a whole page, and the paper was much larger physically. I was writing 1,000 to 1,200-word columns. All of the articles in the paper have since been cut down. Sometimes I find that shorter writing is better. It’s punchier. Do you really want to get into something that’s important only to you and not to the reader? The only person who knows what didn’t get into the article is you. The reader never misses it because the reader didn’t know it existed in the first place.

I can’t stand long reviews. There’s a lot of hot air in theater criticism. I also don’t read reviews as closely as I used to because I don’t find the critics these days to be all that engaging as writers. These critics, especially at the
Times
, have trouble cutting to the chase. I want to know up front whether it’s good or bad, and if it’s worth my time or not. Frank Rich was very good at that. You knew within the first paragraph if the show was good or bad. Peter Marks also knows how to cut to the chase because he’s a reporter. I hate long leads, and I hate long descriptive passages about the way an actor walked across the stage. I hate all that shit. I was taught by tabloid editors, and I have a tabloid sensibility of rock ’em right away.

Peter Marks:
You don’t want to write 1,000 words about every show. Sometimes a show is only worth 500 words. Some reviews are too long. With Charles Isherwood and Ben Brantley, it’s like their showing how big their balls are by the length of the review. Maybe there will soon be arts-oriented websites that want long-form reviewing.

Terry Teachout:
I write on Fridays into a somewhat fixed space. I have 850 to 1,250 words. I also write about more than one show. I try to relate the shows if it seems natural, but I never force it. If they fit, they fit. If they don’t, they don’t. I can decide the different proportions that I give to each show. You don’t really have to write 850 words about every show that you see. A review is like an accordion. You can make it smaller or larger depending on what your editor requires. But no matter what the editor requires, I really do try to say what I have to say as interestingly as I can.

MATT WINDMAN
: Do you use the word “I” in your reviews?