The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (22 page)

Michael Dale:
Only if I’m making a particular point by doing so.

Zachary Stewart:
I use “I,” although my editor often removes it. I think it’s a bit silly to pretend that there’s not an actual person with subjective views and feelings writing the review.

Andy Propst:
If you look at the history of theater criticism, it wasn’t until the 1960s that the
New York Times
allowed a critic—I think it was Brooks Atkinson—to use an “I” in one of his reviews. That sense of voice has changed. Because of the Internet, print criticism has become more casual. I think that’s true of almost all kinds of journalism. Writing online has a sense of being a one-on-one communication, and that lends itself to a certain kind of informality. If you were to compare the tone of a review from 10 to 15 years ago with one from today, you would find that it’s now much less formal, a little less from on high than it once was.

Charles Isherwood:
The
Times
is relatively free about using it. If you’re going to write about a personal response to a particular moment in a play, I don’t think there’s a problem with using an “I.” Some people use “you” or “we,” but I think “I” is more honest and less pretentious. It’s also a way of personalizing a review and drawing in a reader. You can overuse it. But used sparingly, it’s perfectly fine.

David Rooney:
One of the unspoken rules at
Variety
while Peter Bart was editor-in-chief was that you didn’t use the first person. The first person is much more commonly used in consumer papers. I’m still ambivalent about it. I was so drilled in not using “I” or “me” that I can’t help but use it very sparingly. But when there’s a reason for it, I occasionally put myself in the review. It’s fun to throw it in here and there, to let people know that this is your personal take on something. But ideally, a balanced theater review should be—I won’t say detached—but objective and not completely personal. You should be able to put yourself in the audience’s shoes to some degree, even if you’re not a part of the core demographic of what you’re reviewing.

Elysa Gardner:
Having some license with it can enhance your work. There are people who use it really artfully. There are certain cases where you have to say “I.” You can’t say “one” or “you.”

Frank Scheck:
I try not to use it too often. But every once in a while, if something strikes a personal note, and if I feel that injecting myself into the review would give it more flavor, I’ll use it. It also depends on the publication I’m writing for. The
Christian Science Monitor
didn’t go for that style. The
Hollywood Reporter
and the
New York Post
are much freer about allowing it. If you use it too much, it’s self-indulgent. If the reviewer is constantly injecting himself into the article, it becomes more about him or her than the show they’re writing about.

Leonard Jacobs:
Traditionally, it’s been frowned upon. I don’t have an issue with it, so long as it’s not excessive. Using the third-person effectively distances the reader. Of course, you wouldn’t want to begin a review with the word “I.”

John Lahr:
Using “I” is hardly ever useful. The
New Yorker
doesn’t like it. They strike the word, and rightly so. It’s a vulgarity of newspaper journalism. The review should be about the production, not the critic. The trick to writing profiles or to being a good critic is to surrender to the event or the person. Who you are is of no importance. Besides, that comes through in your style and in your reactions.

Terry Teachout:
I use it without hesitation, and I don’t think anybody should hesitate to use it. We are the ones who are writing the review. It doesn’t reflect someone else’s point of view. There are publications that impose a house rule about not using it, but I think they’re wrong.

Hilton Als:
I don’t use it that much because it’s already implicit in what you’re saying. You don’t really need to force that.

MATT WINDMAN
: How do you feel about star rating systems (for example, two out of four stars)?

Hilton Als:
They’re terrible, idiotic, reductive, and silly.

John Lahr:
They’re just appalling.

Howard Shapiro:
I hate them. They’re particularly awful for live theater since it changes from night to night.

Zachary Stewart:
Star rating systems are an excuse to not read the review.

Elysa Gardner:
It’s hard to assign stars. Who am I to say that a show should have only three out of four stars?

Peter Filichia:
I wouldn’t have a problem if I had to give star ratings. Ever since I started going to the theater in 1961, I’ve kept a little notebook. It’s a record of everything I’ve seen, and I have a numbered rating for every show.

John Simon:
They’re pitiful. They’re totally worthless. They’re the opposite of what criticism is. They’re consumer reports of the grossest kind. They belong in consumer report publications, if there are such things.
Bloomberg
used stars when I was there, but I had full control over the number of stars given out. I can imagine a critic writing what is essentially a two-star review and an editor thinking that isn’t good enough and turning it into three stars. But as long as the critic controls the number of stars, and it comes after the critic has written a thoughtful review, then it’s plausible.

Alexis Soloski:
I certainly understand it. I’m obsessed with British detective shows. And when I’m looking for new ones on Netflix, I’ll read the descriptions and glance at the star rankings. If it’s something that has only one star, I’ll be more reluctant to watch it. I also appreciate the value that star ratings have for the consumer, especially since theater tickets are really expensive. If you’re going to pay so much money for a ticket, you want a guarantee that you’re going to like it. I just reviewed the musical
Rocky
for the
Guardian
. I thought the first part was worth one and a half stars and the last twenty minutes were worth five stars. How do you average that out? I think I gave it three stars. It’s not the most useful metric, but I absolutely understand why a reader would desire it.

Ben Brantley:
I don’t like it, but I understand why other people do. If you have a star rating system, that’s what the eye immediately goes to. Someone will think, Since the show only got one star, why should I even bother to read the review? It shuts the door. I know people who only read the first and last paragraphs of a review if there’s no star system. They just want the high points. This is a culture where we just want the high points, and that’s kind of a shame. If you read the whole review, you get a sense of the critic’s personality. If you just look at stars, you don’t get anything else.

Steven Suskin:
When some publications use four stars and others use five stars, how can you compare them? Does one star or zero stars mean a show was terrible? Do two stars mean a show was very good or average? Stars have different meaning from one paper to another, and that’s why I think they’re worthless.

Michael Dale:
I always find it amusing when a show advertises that it got four stars from
Time Out New York
because they use a five-star system.

Note: Not so long ago,
Time Out New York
used a six-star system. When the Holocaust drama
Irina’s Vow
came to Broadway in 2009, it advertised how the Off Broadway production had received four stars from
Time Out New York
, without bothering to mention that it was four out of six stars, and thus not a very impressive rating. I went so far as to write a blog post accusing the show of deceptive advertising.

Don Aucoin:
The
Globe
uses star ratings for the movie reviews and restaurant reviews, but not for theater reviews. I actually have no objection to them. If my editor decided to move to a star system, I’d be okay with it. There can be some value to the stars, as long as they’re just supplementary and not replacing the review itself.

Chris Jones:
It was imposed on me. For the most part, I don’t like it. It’s reductive. It fucks up the critic to some degree because the star rating becomes too important in the process. You think to yourself, Is it three stars? Is it three and a half stars? Is it two and a half stars? I’d rather put that energy into writing a really good lead paragraph. Also, you find that the people you review and their publicists obsess over the star rating.

It does have some advantages. If you give a show the top rating, you can drive people to it in a way that you can’t without it. There are a lot of people who look for what shows get the highest ratings. If you are judicious and sparing in what you give your highest rating to, you can drive a lot of people to a really wonderful show. On the other hand, it’s very difficult to get people to read a two-star or two-and-a-half-star review, so you have to really work at it. They’ll read a one-star review. But with a two-and-a-half-star review, it’s very easy to turn the page.

Helen Shaw:
Time Out
has a star rating system. It’s bad in some ways, but I’ve found it very clarifying in other ways. When your job as a reviewer is to say whether or not someone else should go see a show, it forces you to be brave about saying yes or no. I don’t think saying yes or no is the job of a critic. It’s the job of a reviewer, and the stars help with that function.

Michael Schulman:
I’ve never had to do that. I know that when it was imposed on
Time Out New York
, the critics weren’t happy about it. Suddenly, they felt like grade school teachers.

Adam Feldman:
It can be frustrating. In the case of
Time Out
, I wish they’d let us have half-stars because it would double the degree of subtlety that we can put into the star system. But we don’t have them, and that’s the magazine’s policy around the world. If you look at the stars alone, it can be misleading. You can give something a good rating but have some qualifications. Sometimes it’ll look like a non-recommendation based on the number of stars, but you might have some good things to say about the show, and think there could be an audience for it. I hope that people look beyond the stars and read the review.

David Cote:
It’s just another way to tell the reader, short-handed, what we thought. They are there to help the reader navigate the magazine, but I do think they cheat the reader. If they don’t have time to read a two-star review, then fine. They might not have an experience they otherwise might have had.

Jesse Green:
I’d be embarrassed to be associated with a star rating system. It’s even worse than the awards system in its reductiveness. That being said, I secretly have one. I give every review that I write a star rating—actually, a numerical rating. I keep it on an Excel spreadsheet, which automatically provides a running average. I do this because I want to keep track of my trends, and make sure I’m not going off the deep end by being too negative all the time, or lying down and lapping up whatever’s given to me and being too easy. But I wouldn’t want anyone else to know my idea of the rating for a particular show. I’d rather let people figure that out for themselves.

Roma Torre:
I could be a purist and say that it’s terrible to reduce the measure of a play to four or five stars, but I know that it helps. When I read the papers and see the number of stars, it sets the tone for the review, and I know exactly where they’re going with it. Newspapers love it because it makes it easier for the reader to figure out what’s going on. It’s like a shortcut. It’s sad that we have to do it, but that’s the nature of the beast.

Elisabeth Vincentelli:
I wish we didn’t have them, but we do. I really don’t know any critic who is a fan of them, but you work with the format at your publication.

Frank Scheck:
I don’t like having to do them, but my paper wants them. Ultimately, they’re kind of silly and arbitrary. There are times where I’ll write a review and decide on a certain number of stars, and then my editor will say, “That reads more like a three-star review or a two-star review.”

Thom Geier:
We give letter grades at
Entertainment Weekly
. I don’t think I’ve ever given a show an F, but I’ve probably given a D to some shows. I’ve talked to some of my colleagues about their star rating systems, and I think we all go through similar contortions in terms of how we grade a show. Sometimes I know the letter grade I want to give outright. Other times I need to write my way to the letter grade. Writing the review actually helps me clarify what my overall opinion is. I might end up writing something that is kinder or harsher than what I originally intended. The grade can go up or down a little depending on how the writing goes.

The highbrow publications that look askance at the rating systems tend to be the places with writers who view themselves more as critics than as reviewers, but we serve both functions. If people are going to spend $125 a ticket, they want to know if it’s worth their money. There’s a lot of criticism out there that amounts to a three-handed review, where the writer goes, “On the one hand, it’s this. On the other hand, it’s this. On the other hand, it’s this again,” and you don’t know what the takeaway is. Having a star system or a letter grade helps clarify for the reader whether the show is actually worth forking over money for.

Linda Winer:
Fortunately, I don’t have to do a thumbs up or thumbs down or stars or grades. That would be hard for me. Who’s on top? Who’s winning? Who’s losing? There’s enough of that in our lives already. Ideally, we go to the arts for something other than deciding winners and losers.

Matthew Murray:
I have no problem with stars philosophically, but I like not having to deal with them. I don’t use such a system, and I’m glad I don’t. That’s not really the way I think. I’m not sure I can put into words what would make a four-star play different from a three-and-a-half-star one (or, for that matter, a four-and-a-half-star one), and I’m happy I don’t have to think about. If I were forced to go this route, I might want multiple star ratings: one for the acting, one for the production, one for the design, and maybe one for the show overall, so I could at least acknowledge that there’s no way to give just one score for every part of the production. There are other ways to do that kind of thing. The
New York Times
has no star ratings, but some shows get a “Critics’ Pick” designation that lets you know instantly that the reviewer considers a show to be especially good. I wouldn’t mind doing something like that.