The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (27 page)

Matthew Murray:
Writing for a site with an incredibly active chat board full of opinionated people, I can get all sorts of feedback: people who love me, people who hate me, people who think I hate everything, people who think I’m not qualified, people who wish I held a job with more power. Every possible thing I can hear I’ve heard at one point or another on
All That Chat
.

Peter Marks:
The best kind of feedback is when someone likes your review but doesn’t necessarily agree with it.

Rob Weinert-Kendt:
When I wrote for the
Los Angeles Times
and
Time Out
, I would get pushback from people in the production who wanted to contradict what I said because they were inside of it. In the few productions that I’ve been involved with, I would read the reviews and think, Those critics didn’t get the show at all. That’s probably what all artists say when they read a bad review. You tend to get more negative comments than positive ones. The people who are most motivated to comment are the ones who are pissed off that you didn’t get something, or they have friends in the show, or they think you’re full of shit. Conversely, people will agree with your negative opinion and say that, so the comments tend to be of a negative sort: either they don’t like what you said, or they love what you said because it was so harsh. It’s an unfortunate commentary on people.

Richard Ouzounian:
I don’t engage with people who write anonymous comments under my reviews online.

John Lahr:
The feedback I’ve gotten has been superb. In my office in London, there’s a framed card from Arthur Miller saying my piece on him was “the best thing about my stuff I have ever read.” I’ve gotten cards from Tom Stoppard, David Mamet, Sarah Ruhl, and the public. When I was out on the road, people would come up and say that my writing meant something to them. That’s nice to know that because most of the time, you’re working in your own little cave of consciousness.

Terry Teachout:
It could be something like “Here’s a show you might like,” or “Here’s a company you may not have heard of.” I pay attention to that and take it very seriously. I have gone to shows performed by companies I learned about from people who I trust on social media, and I am very pleased with the results. It’s a big country, and I try to know what’s going on outside of New York.

MATT WINDMAN
: How is reviewing a new play or musical different than reviewing a revival?

Zachary Stewart:
Since there’s no precedent for a new play, there’s an added responsibility to critique the work of the author or composer. If it’s a revival, chances are we already know the show works as a piece of writing. That’s never certain with a new play or musical.

Hilton Als:
You have more history with a revival. With a new piece, you only have the playwright’s previous work.

David Cote:
You have to treat each as an experience, even if you bring a lot of experience to the table. With a revival, there’s obviously more context. Some theaters look at a classic with fresh eyes, and I love that.

Matthew Murray:
They’re completely different, and I don’t care what anyone else, including other critics, tells you. New York theater (and particularly Broadway) is a heavily revival-based culture. Producers are putting on lots of shows with famous titles specifically because the titles are famous and will get people in the theater. Therefore, the reviewer has to work within the broader framework of how the show has been done before. The producers want the financial and name-recognition benefit of putting on shows that have been done before, but they want reviewers to pretend they never have been? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way, and I think other reviewers have a tendency of acting as though it does.

Take the musical
Gypsy
. Since 2001, when I began reviewing, there have been two major productions on Broadway: one starring Bernadette Peters (2003–2004) and one starring Patti LuPone (2008–2009). Producers know this. The people for whom I write know this. And anyone who saw both productions knows that there were major similarities in the concepts, not all of which were endemic merely to the text. Not everyone who saw the production with Patti LuPone also saw the one with Bernadette Peters, but it opened on Broadway less than five years after the previous one closed. I would consider it a dereliction of duty for a reviewer to pretend that the LuPone
Gypsy
existed in a vacuum.

Elysa Gardner:
With a revival, you are bringing all these preconceived notions and impressions to the table. With a new work, you are inclined to focus more on the material itself, but that’s not to say I can’t be completely blown away by a certain performance in an original play or musical, or by the director’s vision for it.

Howard Shapiro:
If it’s a new play, I’m going to want to write at least as much (and probably more) about the content of the play as about the production. I think that’s what people are most interested in.

Don Aucoin:
More plot summary is needed in a review of a new show. If I’m writing about
Hamlet
or
Death of a Salesman
, I don’t need to tell readers much about the plot. With revivals, you want to focus on what’s new. What original take did the director or the actor come up with?

Steven Suskin:
Revivals are only revivals for the people who have seen the show before. For people who haven’t, it’s new to them. You’re writing a review for the entire audience, and not just for the people who are already familiar with the show. You’re not just saying, “It’s better than it was last time.” In some cases, when the show has recently been revived, you have to talk about that. For the recent
Cabaret
revival, you needed to refer to the last two productions because the audience was likely to have them in mind. If you go to a revival and it’s not as electric as the last one, you’re not doing anybody a favor by pretending the other revival didn’t happen.

Ben Brantley:
If you’ve seen a show before—and you probably have if you’ve been in this job as long as I have—you want to assess how it was received before and whether it feels dated or suddenly revitalized, which can happen. A new show is scarier, both for the people putting it on and for those writing about it. You’re writing about something that hasn’t been written about before, and that’s exciting. On the other hand, writing about the Globe production of
Twelfth Night
was thrilling. It made you feel like you were seeing the play for the first time.

Marilyn Stasio:
Directors are usually behind revivals because they have something new to say, some fresh contribution to make. When you review a revival, you’re really looking for that original contribution. What’s the need to revisit this subject? What makes this interpretation different? What’s the vision? What’s fresh about it? Look at those fantastic shows that came in from the London’s Globe, and the original way they re-examined
Twelfth Night
and
Richard III
. I’ve seen many productions of
Twelfth Night,
but never one as enjoyable as that.

Elisabeth Vincentelli:
I try to avoid comparing productions of the same play because not everybody is going to have seen all of them, or even two of them. Of course, if there’s one that’s really great, it’s going to be hard to not compare them. There’s been a lot of
King Lear
and
Uncle Vanya
lately. At one point, there was a lot of
Twelfth Night
. Sometimes you go into a play that’s done a lot with a bit of weariness. I feel like I’m getting impatient with Shakespeare—or maybe just the craven, unimaginative way that Shakespeare plays are staged. He’s taking up too much oxygen, to the detriment of the other classic plays that we don’t see. I’m Shakespeared out!

Brian Lipton:
There are so many revivals now that critics get caught in a weird bind. Sometimes I feel like I’ve seen too many productions of the same play, and all my memories can get mixed up, or I end up comparing the newest production to earlier productions that my readers haven’t seen. Maybe that’s wrong, but I do think you need to have a real sense of theater history to be truly useful. When they do the next production of
Forum
, I don’t need to read the review of someone who saw Zero Mostel in the 1960s, but I definitely want to read the review of somebody who at least saw Nathan Lane in the 1990s.

Gordon Cox:
With a new show, it can be difficult to spot the fingerprints of whoever shaped its elements. Did this element come from the dramaturgical input of the director? Was the theme of the play made clear because of the writing, or did the set designer do something? The production introduces itself to you as the play itself. It can be hard to separate the two and understand how the play is separate from the production. With a revival, chances are that you’ve read it or seen it before, and you get a clear sense of what choices the director made or what’s new about the production. It helps to read the script after you see a new play. Afterwards, you can think about what the director added to it.

Michael Schulman:
One question you always have to ask yourself with revivals is whether there is a good reason for it to be revived. You need to figure out where it came from and its historical moment to determine how it’s being interpreted. Is it a classical interpretation? Is it a completely wild reimaging?

Richard Ouzounian:
If it’s a new play or musical, you’re writing mostly about the work itself. That’s what the major item is. You don’t necessarily go into depth about the designers or the actors or the director. You’ll mention the other people in passing, but you’re there to write about the work itself.

Rob Weinert-Kendt:
With a revival, you shouldn’t spend too much time talking about previous productions. One of my least favorite things is when critics go, “This isn’t as good as the last production,” or “It’s not as good as the movie version.” People are always writing about how a show should be done, or how it was done last time, but your real responsibility is to write about what’s actually going on in the room, right then and there.

Jesse Green:
With a new show, you don’t have many preformed opinions. You may be just as surprised as everybody else in terms of the plot. I feel a greater sense of responsibility if it’s new. Critics ganging up on a new show can really destroy it. You can really set back a talented playwright unnecessarily. Sometimes you may have to, but it’s something you should take very seriously.

John Lahr:
You know more when the play is not new. You know the history of the show, and you have more information to convey. You can think about the time the show was written in and how it speaks to us now. Take, for example, the recent Broadway revival of
The Pajama Game
. It just so happens that I saw the opening night performance of the original production in 1954 because Eddie Foy, Jr., was my godfather. I put that in my review of the revival, and I got a really interesting article out of it.

Michael Sommers:
It’s always thrilling to write about a new play and discover a new voice. I also love a lot of the old plays, and it’s great to see new takes on them, like David Cromer’s production of
Our Town
, where the kitchen suddenly materialized on Emily’s birthday. After all that stark nothingness, you had the real thing, and you experienced it with Emily. That was a wonderful surprise.

Peter Marks:
With a revival, you’re rendering a different level of judgment. It’s all about the interpretation and what the director is bringing to the work and why. Why are they doing this play? Does it have something to do with events outside the play? Does the director have a personal relationship with the play? Is it something about the audience’s love of this play, where they can’t seem to get enough of it? It’s also about discovering things about the play you haven’t seen before.

I think the most recent revival of
A Raisin in the Sun
told me something I didn’t know about the play. A lot of people objected to Denzel Washington being too old to play Walter Lee, which was a legitimate concern. Nevertheless, I found the sourness in the production—the way the family members were getting on each other’s nerves—to be refreshing. There was a sense of what living in that environment for so long does to people, especially to Walter Lee. At least in my experience of the play, that felt new.

Terry Teachout:
With a revival, it’s easier to separate the show from the way it’s being performed. When I review a show by a regional company that I’m unfamiliar with, I always see a revival of a play that I’ve seen before because I want to be able to see the company and not the play. The first time you see a play or musical, the work is coming at you in a package that is very difficult to tease apart. You’re being hit by a total experience. It’s only when you come back to it again that you can start to analyze what you are seeing in a clearer, cooler way.

Thom Geier:
Oftentimes, it requires less legwork and fewer mental contortions to review a new show because it’s being presented fresh. You have less baggage to bring to it. But there’s something kind of exciting about both processes. You don’t want to be the guy who got the galley of
Ulysses
in advance and didn’t get it.

Chris Jones:
For me, whether or not a show is finished is a bigger distinction than a play versus a revival. It’s partly the result of working in Chicago, where a lot of shows are having their out-of-town tryouts and are clearly not finished. It could be on its way somewhere else. If that’s the case, I try to reflect that.

If you were to hold me underwater to get me to confess to a bias, the one I would most readily admit to is a bias for new work or a radically interesting revival. That’s just a result of going to the theater every night. With the Denzel Washington revival of
A Raisin in the Sun
, there was nothing in it that was inherently interesting to me. I always have great respect for a new show, for something made out of whole cloth. There is a great risk there, and there is a great striving. When it is serious—and by serious, I mean it is purported to be about life as it is lived—I have even more respect for it. That doesn’t mean I’m going to like it, but I do respect it.