HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE MARK FISHER Foreword by Chris Jones Bloomsbury Methuen Drama An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic BLOOMSBURY LOXIION • OXFORD ■ NKW YORK • XKW DELHI ■ SYDNEY MORAVSKÁ ZEMw KNIHOVNA 2610654346 Bloomsbury Mathuan Drama An impnnt of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic Imprint previously known as Methuen Drama 50 Bedford Square London WC1B3DP UK 1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY METHUEN DRAMA and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic First published 2015 Reprinted by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama 2015 ©Mark Fisher. 2015 Mark Fisher has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Catalogutng-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: HB: 978-147424629-3 PB: 978-14725-2054-8 ePOF: 978-14725-2056-2 ePub: 978-14725-2055-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicatlon Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress To Robin Hodge, for giving me the chance to learn on the job Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain 2610654346 CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Foreword x 1 Introduction 1 2 How to learn from critics of the past 11 3 How to take on different critical styles 4 How to write for your readers 53 5 How to do your research 63 6 How to find your voice 75 7 How to write the first sentence 95 8 I low to structure n review 9 How to write in the moment 115 10 How to write opinions 125 11 How to give star ratings -43 12 How to write about acting 149 13 How to write about plays 165 ™» CONTENTS 14 How to write about the production 173 15 How to write about the audience 191 16 How to write about context 207 17 How to write about emotions 225 18 How to write about your bias 233 19 How to write about culture, society and politics 249 20 How to put everything together 261 Index 265 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Sarah-Jane Fisher and Caroline Johnston for their language skills; to Neil Cooper, Robert Cushman, Karen Fricker, Joyce McMillan, Amy Taylor, Lisa Warrington and Tonnvane Wiswell for their critical wisdom; to Simon Beaufoy, Rob Dmmmond, Rupert Goold, Zinnie Harris and Kelly McAndrew for insights into their work; to Anna Brewer for her patience as an editor; to my anonymous reviewer, who offered some extremely insightful comments; and to Jane, Lotte and Archie for putting up with me, Mark Fisher FOREWORD xi FOREWORD You've picked up a book, an excellent, thoughtful, insight-laden book by Mark Fisher, on how to write about the theatre. Most introductions laud what you are about to read. Behold the opposite approach. They asked a professional theatre critic, didn't they? Mr Fisher is supposed to be discussing criticism, isn't he? So how about an introduction that criticizes the book? Alas, there is little or nothing in the pages that follow that can help you with the very thing that I find hardest of all about writing about the theatre, even though I do it pretty much every day of my life and have done for years. Today, in fact, is a very typical weekend autumnal day for me: two shows to see, two reviews to write. And, sigh, a due (or is that overdue?) introduction to a book designed to serve young critics. Oniy there is one way it cannot serve them - heck, a way in which it might well get in their way. Your way, dear reader. How to Write About Theatre can do an awful lot for you. This is V,'h:M '( r,|ll||r-I :h> K'r V'"- Sure, critics criticize. That's what the general public thinks we do the most - we're assumed to sit there in the dark, ready to destroy careers on a whim, or make summary judgements, or just label things, ad nauseam. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Good play. Lousy performance. Two-and-a-half stars. I was moved. I was bored stiff. The earth moved. No it didn't. Whatever. A few years of merely that on a daily basis, and an existential crisis results. Trust me. Actors avoid us in the foyer. We're used as cold-hearted antagonists in movies like Birdman or Chef or Ratatouiile. These films can't end without our judgements, for there is no other way to document struggles overcome. Our quotes are taken out of context and emblazoned on marquees (why did the spell check just make that embalmed!) in Times Square or Leicester Square. (Most of us love that, even though we have to pretend total indifference.) We're employed to gussy up collections of amateur performances; who'd have watched Britain's Got Talent without the thrill of public critical judgement? Nobody, that's who. Our vocabulary is copied, but not our journalistic ethics, millions of times a day, on Yelp and TripAdvisor. Our motives are impugned. Not just our prejudices but our personalities, or the lack thereof, are dissected by those we've never met. But reaiiy, all of that is noise. You want to be a critic? You must write. Every day, ideally. Now, ideally. That means you have to commit fingers to keys, summon up inspiration from the dark recesses of your soul, take a stand on something, put yourself out there, risk it all, create. You have to stop reading, thinking, messing around, avoiding the task at hand. In a short while you'll have to put down this very fine book. You won't be able to cling to its advice; it won't write your review for you, and I'll bet your deadline is fast approaching. So why are you wasting time reading this introduction anyway? Most writers are procrastinators (did I mention I was supposed to write this last week?). And most writers are insecure. This includes critics ■- well, any critic worth readinp. I i 'Ok iMck .it |ho Slri'l <■■' in;i'('Xlik.1-'. >n t n i 'S'. -\■ \-: :'•! ' ; ■ vV.i.. a conceptual approach to the writing task at hand. You might even call it risky, although it is never wise to start thinking that anything in the bourgeois world of writing about the arts has a iife-or-death importance, even though some of those you are writing about may claim so. Do not be taken in. In the theatre, there is always another night. Artists change. Forgiveness is possible. Most of them get better with age. Still, everything that has followed that first paragraph has flowed from my initial risk. And so here I am, in paragraph 10 (Damn! Now I can't go back and revise, and, damn it again, what if the editor changes xii FOREWORD FOREWORD xiii the number of paragraphs? Too late) committed to an idea. Yet I don't know if Mr Fisher will like it, nor his editor. I can't worry about that, really, otherwise I will disappear down the rabbit hole of the expectations of others, I just have to write the truth as I see it, as I feel it in this moment, for arts criticism is a time-bound activity and what feels profound on a Sunday morning can feel like stale bread by Thursday. Write about the truth of the moment. That's all a critic can do, really. Whatever she is writing, and for whomever. This book - and it really is a fine book - will give you lots of different ways to organize your thoughts, think about the job at hand. It offers things to try and always include, traps to avoid, help with understanding the history of those who have tried to make a living doing what you are doing. I'll just add a couple of thoughts. To write about the theatre is to write about life. To write about life is to write about death -especially the way we all exit our tawdry existence at a time and place not of our own choosing. Think about the plays you love the most; dollars to doughnuts they are about this very thing. As a critic, you are constantly searching for truth, and to do so is to look for better ways to understand the end that befalls us all. 'What?', you protest. 'This fool is saying my review of Cafs has to be about death? My review of the sequel to the sequel of some heavy-metal jukebox musical that was lousy to begin with has to make some profound assertion about existential truth?' Y>;s. !h;it is what :his tool <::-, saying. And some huno-, ;r VjOuki he1;.'. It's a tough life. And you are writing about showbiz. I've worked hard today on avoiding writing this introduction. That included taking time to read my email - always my favourite way to not write. I happened to write a column in my newspaper today defending critics from the constant charge that what we do costs us nothing, even though the artist puts their very soul on the line. I argued that it costs us critics plenty to write a negative review, because we actually do know how much the artist has risked, how much they care, what our verdict might mean in terms of money or future opportunity, how much the artist has sacrificed. For very, very few people do theatre for the money. They always deserve respect (so keep that in mind). I also argued that it costs us even more to write a positive review, for then we hang out there with the artist, maybe even farther out than the artist, given that artists are expected to believe in themselves. When we love something, we take the biggest risks of all, hoping our readers will go and then still trust us the next time, praying that we will be on the right side of the historical verdict that is still years away from being rendered. If a critic tells a reader they love something, and then the reader does not, the reader feels superior to the critic. This is dangerous. But it must be done. A critic must risk something on the back of her passions. Why bother, otherwise? Alas, critical risk is rarely appreciated. My email was filled with reactions to this column. One was scathing: 'Your profession is a good case in point of everything that is wrong, false, misleading, contradictory and disastrous in this society', a correspondent wrote. 'The people who actually make the effort, actually try to do something, actually take the risks are subjected to examination and judgement by those who can do nothing, do do nothing, have no intention of doing anything practical and who, in the height of injustice, get to keep their jobs no matter what stupidities they say or write.' Ouch. 7inq. You still want to write about the theatre after readinq thatv Of course you do. You must. There is no theatre without those who write about it. And to write about theatre is just an excuse to write about life, and there is no better way to spend your life. Deadlines are a blessing. Without one, I'd never have written this. ( would have created nothing. So read this book and then go write, well. Care. Risk it all. And do it today. Your email can wait. Chris Jones, chief theatre critic, Chicago Tribune December 2014 1 INTRODUCTION The job of the theatre critic Writing about theatre is an act of translation. It turns the language of performance into the language of words. More precisely, it turns the languages, plural, of performance into the language of words. Every show speaks in many tongues and, whether you are writing a tweet, a Facebook update, an over-night review, a critical essay, a blog, a radio broadcast or a YouTube review, you will find yourself moving from the rich Babel-like conversation of live performance to plan, two-dimensional prose. Things will get lost in translation. You start with a performance. It begins at a fixed time and has a predetermined length, yet, moment to moment, it is fluid and organic, already resistant to ordinary words. It may have a literary component and perhaps that will give the writer some security, yet it is also sculptural, visual and dynamic. Its meaning may be communicated through words, gesture, music, lighting, costumes, choreography, design or, more likely, some juxtaposition of all these elements. For the literary drama i:: llK , wl 'i i ■■li.i! !!t::- i i' 1I7 til'-1 \'.,'f iff is 1 if 11 ; ii lfj!|'-:i ItH i S< ■■:[:(, 11 >i:. ' ! I > ■'. hi a concern. But for the journalistic theatre critic, who considers drama in performance, it is fundamental, Richard Steele, one of the first journalistic theatre critics, understood this. He was also a playwright and in the 1733 preface to his play The Conscious Lovers, he praised the role of the actor in giving three-dimensional life to a script: It must be remember'd, a Play is to be seen, and is made to be Represented with the Advantage of Action, nor can appear but with half the Spirit, without it; for the greatest Effect of a Play in 2 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE INTRODUCTION 3 reading is to excite the Reader to go see it; and when he does so, it is then a Play has the Effect of Example and Precept.1 The effect Steele refers to is complex. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said for an audience to accept a play required a 'temporary half-faith'2 similar to the act of dreaming. Just as we neither believe nor disbelieve a dream, so we experience theatre in a state midway between credulity and reason. Thinking along similar lines, David Mamet said we 'respond to drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dream life'.3 Like a dream, theatre plays on your conscious mind as well as your subconscious mind, it toys with your intellect and your emotions, it makes you think and it makes you feel. What you end up with, at the other end of the critic's process, is a set of words that attempt to encapsulate this experience, to translate the subconscious into the conscious and to pin down this elusive dream with its many languages, impressions and multiple meanings. Those words will be approximate, a rough draft, an impression, always an imperfect translation. Have you ever given a satisfactory account of what one of your dreams was like? The impossible quest for perfection is what makes writing about theatre so rewarding; it is nearly attainable and forever just beyond your grasp. Writing abut theatre comes in many forms, from learned treatise to Facebook post. In this book, we'll focus primarily on the craft of the review, both as it has traditionally been practised in newspapers and as it now predominantly appears online. For ease of expression, I will talk about writers and readers, but the book pertains equally to podcasters and listeners, vloggers and viewers. Neither is this to discount other ways of writing about theatre, be it a school essay or a celebrity interview; it is just that reviewing requires such a dynamic response to live performance that its lessons are applicable almost universally. If you can describe a gorgeous set design or a heart-stopping performance or a provocative idea in an over-night review, you can describe it anywhere. My own experience as a theatre critic began at some point in the late 1980s when I was working at The List magazine, an arts and events guide for central Scotland, By that time, I had graduated with a degree in drama from the University of Kent at Canterbury, where I remember being the only one in my class who, when given the option, wrote a series of reviews rather than a conventional essay. It was an early example of my twin interest in writing and theatre, although it wasn't immediately apparent that that would become my chosen career. Officially, I was employed at The List as a production assistant, but Sarah Hemming, the theatre editor, kept seeing me at the theatre and encouraged me to write. By the time she left, I was in pole position to take over her job. Still only in my mid-twenties, I was given a tremendous opportunity to review everything from student shows to major international productions, as well as to interview all manner of actors, directors and playwrights. I went on to launch and edit a quarterly magazine called Theatre Scotland, which lasted four years before the money ran out, and worked as a freelance theatre critic and feature writer for The Herald in Glasgow and subsequently The Guardian. As a lot of this book talks about the critic's bias, prejudice and cultural assumptions, I should give an indication of my own perspective: I write as someone who is white, male, heterosexual, middle class, middle-aged, able-bodied, left-leaning, liberal-minded, English and living in Scotland. The bulk of my theatre writing has been for traditional magazines and newspapers, and I have a longstanding presence on the internet through my website www.theatrescotland. com, plus sundry blogs and social media activity. You'll find more about this book at www.howtowriteabouttheatre.com and on Twitter ©writeabouttheat The twenty-first century critic So what precisely is the job we are talking about? The cliche of the day says everyone is a critic - and if that were the case, it would suggest there's not much to it. As with most cliches, the idea has a kernel of truth. A UK survey by Ticketmaster in 201 34 reported that one in five 4 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE theatregoers had written 'reviews' ot shows they had seen. Many of these people had done so regularly and most were using social media. Should that lead us to believe that 20 per cent of audience members are critics? That seems unlikely, especially as the survey did not give a definition of what constituted a review, but even so there is no doubt the internet has been a liberating democratic force, providing a voice to anyone who wants to be heard. Add to this the decline of newspaper sales and the consequent laying-off of journalists (arts writers often being the first to go) and, early in the twenty-first century, it feels as though a shift in cultural power has taken place. Out has gone the top-down school of criticism, with definitive judgements made by the few; in has come a more egalitarian system. Now the opinions of a self-selecting group of 'dead white men',5 to use the phrase of Nicholas Hytner in 2007 when he was artistic director of National Theatre of Great Britain, counts for no more than any other group. Does this make everyone a critic? I'm not so sure. For as long as theatre has existed, every member of the audience has had an opinion about it. Often the opinion is simply expressed ('I loved it'. . . 'It was OK'... 'I was bored'), but it is an opinion nonetheless. When it comes to opinions, critics have never held the monopoly. Much of the noise you hear in the bar after the show is the sound of people telling each other what they thought. And much of the social-media traffic generated by a show amounts to the same thing. This is all good, h'it nms* >f ihe Sir'ii':. :< 1-10 i:li,ir;.civ1' Kvr-o! h;is nir.re in <:nnvnon vviih casual post-show chatter than with criticism twiuch iwi'i io say post-show chatter cannot be insightful). Here are some comments seen on Twitter about the 2014 West End production of Let the Right One In: Great time ©RightOneln MpolloTheatre Highly recommend. Fantastic staging & cast. Never seen a play like it. If you haven't seen ©RightOneln yet, go see it. It's the most beautiful play. Choreography is stunning, especially the shadow knife scene. INTRODUCTION 5 #LTROI was amazing! Loved every minute off it, set was beautiful and acting was unreal! Must see! :p The people who wrote these messages would be very surprised to be told they were performing the same task as the lead critic of The New York Times. They'd be more surprised still to find themselves held up as examples in a book about theatre criticism. They were just saying what they thought. Perhaps they were no different to the unfortunate fifteen factory workers who were made to sign up as people's theatre critics in the former East Germany. In an attempt to do away with the ideologically unsound bourgeois journalists of old, the communist authorities gave writer Erich Loest the task of training a group of workers in the skills of the job. According to Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56, the scheme fell flat. Loest told her: We went to the theatre together and afterwards or the next day we met. And I told them, tried to tell them, what a theatre review is about. And then we wrote a review together. I was twenty-five by then and I had liked going to the theatre ... It was horrible. We were all unhappy. I was unhappy, they were even more unhappy They were supposed to write a theatre review, they could not do that and they did not learn it with me. After half a year the whole tni'iij Piv'ni!■■-!>.I Technology has allowed everyone's opinions to be widely disseminated - and that's culturally exciting - but there's more to being a critic than havtng your opinions heard. Opinions are commonplace; it is analysis that makes a critic. What counts is the reasoning behind your opinions and not everyone is interested in providing that. All the same, in today's world, the distinction is not clear cut. You'll find many professional theatre reviews that convey little more than the tweets above - and you'll also find tweets that push the possibilities of the medium to the maximum. Using the Twitter 6 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE INTRODUCTION 7 name @Snap140, Snap Reviews promised 'theatre reviews in 140 characters or less'. Here are three examples from December 2013: ** not great. The numbers are not good and feel tacked on. Bells and whistles but no drama or structure. **** first half drags. 2nd more than makes up for it. Blinding, @ RebJBenson gives stunning pen*. Go. ** sad that a piece celebrating the imagination has so little itself. Blame the direction. Cast do their best. Given the narrow parameters, these instant judgements covered a surprising amount of ground. They pointed out strengths as well as weaknesses ('Bells and whistles but no drama or structure') and apportioned credit and blame ('Blame the direction. Cast do their best.') In just eleven words ('sad that a piece celebrating the imagination has so little itself), the writer managed to pack in both an analysis of what the show was trying to do and a verdict on how well it did it. Reinforced by the star ratings, these tweets gave an unambiguous consumer guide. EXERCISE Review a show in the form of a 140 character tweet. Aim to convey as much critical information, including description, analysis and evaluation, as you can. How well did you do? Reviewer or critic? In a very short period of time, the critical landscape has changed. One way to make sense of what's going on is to distinguish between a reviewer and a critic. As the traditional definition has it, a reviewer is the voice of the theatregoer, someone who writes with immediacy, often over night, painting a picture of what has taken place and offering thumbs-up/thumbs-down consumer advice, Nearly everyone who supplies social-media updates would fit into this category. A critic, by contrast, is a deeper thinker, someone who presents reflections that set the production in a broader context, less concerned with its strengths and weaknesses than what it means in the greater scheme of things, bringing in history, philosophy, aesthetics, politics, sociology and anything else that illuminates the work. You may find this type of writing in a long theatre blog, but almost certainly not in a 140-character tweet (even if written by the same person). These definitions are a good starting point for discussing what different writers are doing, and there is a strong case for adhering to them, but they also invite confusion. This is primarily because few writers, let alone readers, make the distinction themselves. Professional bodies such as the American Theatre Critics Association, the Canadian Theatre Critics Association, the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland, the Critics' Circle (in the UK), the International Association of Theatre Critics and the New York Drama Critics' Circle almost always use the word 'critic'. This is the case even though, by the laws of probability, some of their members must sometimes turn out writing that better fits the description of a review. In a study of the profession, Lehman Fnqpl wrote that ho would 'not bfi witinn about critic?' bnonnso 'what wf1 re-: K i c ];nlv .ire m .i y ; ly u y ji: i,-i !'.t ■< y- H'/i -i's' y ■ '1 t y 1 !1 n-. 11 , j book he called The Critics/ What's more, in practice, the distinction is fuzzy. A reviewer working to a tight deadline with a limited amount of space is still capable of an insight we may call criticism. A critic, taking time and space to be discursive, may also make review-like observations as they go. Definitions that are precise in theory are blurred in real life. For these reasons, in this book, I have stuck with the word 'critic'. Better to sidestep the idea that you're either a critic or a reviewer (because, of course, you can be both) and explore the multitude of tasks writers take on between the extremes of snap 8 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE INTRODUCTION 9 judgement and analytical essay. As far as this book is concerned, anyone who steps beyond the purely experiential ('I liked it') to the quizzical {'Why did I like it?') is a critic. In the chapters ahead, we will look at the different forms critical writing takes, consider the various reasons people read it and analyse the many competing pressures on the critic. These range from the need to write entertainingly to the willingness to expose personal feelings; from the ability to put forward a convincing argument to the awareness of bias; from the skill of giving permanence to an ephemeral art to the capacity to set that art in its cultural context. We wilt also look in detail at the many skills that come together in the theatre, be that the art of the actor, playwright, director, composer, choreographer or technical crew, By the end, we'll have not so much a rule book as a palate of possibilities. On the way, we'll try out some exercises to test out some of the ideas; theatre criticism is a practical art and the best way to learn about it is to do it. First, though, we'll take a look at the story so far with a quick trot through the history of criticism, particularly as it applies to the newspapers and periodicals of the last four centuries. Times and attitudes have changed, but understanding the development of criticism, culminating with the three critical questions formulated by Alessandro Manzoni at the start of the nineteenth century, is the best way of making sense of writing about theatre in the age of the internet. I Notes ! 1 Steele, Richard (1761), The Dramatic Works of Sir Richard Steele, Knt, J. and B. Tonson, S. Crowder, T. Caslon, T. Lownds, H. Woodgate and S. Brookes, 2 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1907), Coleridge's Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Poets and Dramatists, J. M. Dent & Sons. 3 Mamet, David (1994), 'A National Dream Life', in A Whore's Profession, Faber and Faber, 4 Ticketmaster (2013), State of Play: Theatre UK, http://blog.ticketmaster \ (co.uk/news/theatre-uk-evolving-engaging-2013-2209). 5 Hoyle, Ben (14 May 2007), 'Dead white men in the critic's chair scorning work of women directors', in The Times. j 6 Applebaum, Anne (2013), Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56, Penguin Books. 7 Engel, Lehman (1976), The Critics, Macmilian. i i EXERCISE Write about the same show twice for different publications. In the first, you are a reviewer, producing a 200-word write-up for a local events guide that gives advice on what to see. In the second, you are a critic, writing anything up to 1,000 words for an international theatre magazine read by foreigners interested in the place of theatre in society. --.- | HOW TO LEARN FROM CRITICS OF THE PAST The story so far Criticism is everywhere you look. It's in the hyped-up opinions of X Factor judges; it's in the instant reactions of first-night tweets; it's in the lengthy essays of the London Review of Books; and in the short sharp commentaries of the daily newspapers. With criticism being fired at us from all directions, it's easy to forget it wasn't always like this. The approach we take today is not inevitable but the product of a long history of evolving critical thought. It has been shaped by great thinkers and influenced by ever-changing social values. Many of the ideas go back more than two millennia to the time of the ancient Greeks. Other ideas, especially where it comes to journalistic reviewing, are much more recent - just two or three centuries old, Getting to grips with how this history played out gives us a better understanding of the functions of c.ntinsni and ;-i si'mwrior so>isa of wha' it is !; ■ n por*ont oomodv ! itfle or no adhoronrn li'-'jon p;i:d to r.i:*;'; ' AvV*vv;ir(llv". In'Wtw. ;!;.,. ..v,js I'm 11r■;t professionally produced comedy written by an American citizen, so the critic could not overlook its landmark status: 'But as it is the first American attempt at this species of composition, and as it may induce others to follow and improve upon it, we think it worthy of the public attention, and cheerfully add our tribute of applause.' The arrival of the railways in the mid-nineteenth century opened up new audiences for touring theatre companies in North America as well as a new national readership for theatre criticism in sundry periodicals. A commercial market for theatre criticism was now in place. In Dublin, Paul Hiffernan was writing criticism of the Theatre Royal as early as 1748 in his journal The Tickler. The first publication of its kind in Scotland was the Edinburgh Theatrical Censor, which came and went in twelve issues during 1803, its aim being to act as a 'valuable repository of living opinions' that 'would serve as a vehicle for the communication and diffusion of those refinements, which tend eminently to the well-being of a civilized community'.B This sense of a society defining itself by its taste and morality would persist for some time. In Canada, where theatrical performances had been puffed in newspapers since the 1770s, it took a little longer for independently minded criticism to take a hold. William Lyon Mackenzie in the York Colonial Advocate and Joseph Howe in the Novascotian led the field in the 1820s, followed with greater consistency from the 1850s as city populations increased in size. Down in Chicago, the Tribune published its first theatre review in 1853 ('the selection of pieces, both for interest and moral, has been very judicious'9), kicking off a 150-year history anthologized by critic Chris Jones in Bigger, Brighter, Louder. The Australian carried theatre reviews from at least as early as 1834 when the Sydney Theatre showed 'due sense' by staging Otheliow and the critic explained that 'candid and just criticism is an encouragement to exertion, and by no means detracts from the real merits of the actors'. The New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator carried news of tho oneninq of a thoatro in 1R43. its report morphinq into a review of Inn i iovir o' l!u; Suns, a fic^odr, i'n;i oy POvv.nP is-v: >ijl *•'):•«• ' v ii' ' i with a little more practice, and some curtailing, will be likely to prove a favourite representation'.11 Similar stories were played out elsewhere in the world in response to the development of the theatre industry itself. Back in London, by the time Leigh Hunt started reviewing for Tt% News in 1805 and Hazlitt for The Morning Chronicle in 1813, theatrH" criticism was an established profession. These writers are sometimes identified as the originators of journalistic criticism, but it is fairer to say they built on a young but thriving tradition, introducing new levels of ( BRNO 18 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE HOW TO LEARN FROM CRITICS OF THE PAST 19 precision and erudition. Hunt's innovation was to show his reasoning as weii as his judgement, opening up the possibility that the reader may come to a different opinion. Hazlitt praised him for giving the 'true pine-apple flavour to theatrical criticism, making it a pleasant mixture of sharp and sweet'.12 In his turn, Hazlitt was noted for the degree of precision he brought to his writing and it is thanks to him that we have such a vivid idea of the acting technique of Edmund Kean with his 'convulsed motions of the hands, and the involuntary swellings of the veins of the forehead',13 With writing as vivid as this and with readers ready to be enlightened, the age of the journalistic critic had arrived. Manzoni's three questions There had always been those who took issue with at least some of the neo-classical rules, and with the Romantic movement came the backlash. Influenced by the thinking of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who favoured the rights of the individual over the authority of the government, a new generation of poets, novelists, critics and playwrights started to react against the neo-classical certainties and to celebrate the beauty of nature and the creativity of the individual. For critics, it meant a new framework. Instead of beginning with a set of more-or-less fixed rules and applying them to any given artwork, they took their cue from the artwork itself. Now what mattered was something more subjective: not an external checklist or some universal truth, but the impression the artwork made on them. Among those at the forefront of the Romantic movement was the German poet and philosopher Karl Friedrich von Schlegel whose theories about artworks being organic creations influenced Alessandro Manzoni, an Italian novelist and playwright. Manzoni came to the conclusion that every work of art had its own reason to exist and should therefore be judged on its own terms. He put Romantic theory into practice in his tragedy // conte di Carmagnota (The Count of Carmagnola), published in 1819. This was a play that paid no heed to the three unities, imposed no restrictions on the number of characters and broke free of traditional rhetoric. What matters to us, however, is Manzoni's preface in which he wrote: Besides which, any work of art contains within it the elements necessary to enable anyone wishing to do so to form an opinion on it. In my view they are the following: What did the author set out to do? Was this a reasonable ambition in the first place? Has the author achieved what they set out to do? Failing to look at a work of art from this angle and insisting at all costs on judging every piece according to a set of rules (the certainty and universality of which is open to question) is to risk taking a wholly wrong approach to a piece of work. Though it must be said that this is one of the lesser evils which might befall us in this world.14 Here we see the first iteration of a philosophy that has characterized theatre criticism to this day, whether you are talking about William Archer, Max Beerbohm and George Bernard Shaw in Victorian London, early twentieth-century Americans such as George Jean Nathan, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott, or their successors including Katharine Brisbane in Australia, Harold Clurman in the USA, Kenneth Tynan in the UK and Herbert Whittaker in Canada. The formulation reached us by a circuitous route. In 1820, the British journal Quarterly Review gave an unfavourable review to The Count of Carmagnola. it was then that Manzoni found a champion in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The German writer edited his own journal, Über Kunst und Alterthum, and here in 1821, he defended the play and picked up on Manzoni's idea. Once again, he was dismissive of dogmatic rules-based criticism and in favour of a more fluid, artist-centred approach: There is both destructive and productive criticism, The former is very easy. You need only establish in your mind some benchmark, 20 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE some exemplary model, however narrow-minded it may be, so that you can then be boldly certain: this work of art does not match the benchmark and is therefore not much good. The matter is then brushed aside and, without a second thought, you can declare your requirement has not been satisfied, Productive criticism is a good deal more difficult. You would ask: 'What did the author intend? Is this intention reasonable and prudent? And to what extent has it been successfully carried out?'16 Goethe usually gets the credit for these three questions, but they properly belong to Manzoni. For our purposes, they may be better considered in a different order and expressed as: 1 What were the theatremakers trying to do? 2 How well did they do it? 3 Was it worth it? These questions are at the heart of this book and we will return to them repeatedly, Let's consider each in a little more detail. What were the theatremakers trying to do? !o ask this question is lo assess a piece ot theatre on its own terms. It ensures that your first consideration is what the show is, not what you would like it to be. Imagine, for example, that you preferred pantomime to tragedy. You'd be entitled to your opinion, but that wouldn't make it reasonable to criticize a tragedy for not casting a man in a dress. Just as you wouldn't fault a pole vaulter for lack of swimming skills, so it would be unreasonable to damn a theatre production for something it wasn't intending to do in the first place. If you focus on what the theatremakers were attempting, however, your HOW TO LEARN FROM CRITICS OF THE PAST 21 review should end up with some relationship to the world as it is and not to your own personal fantasy. It's a question of assuming everything you see on stage is deliberate, that it is there for a reason, and to work from there. On the surface, that sounds straightforward, but how failsafe an approach is it? Among those who argue it doesn't work are proponents of the intentional fallacy. This is the theory put forward by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, where they argue that it is neither possible nor relevant to know an author's intentions, The theory rests on three objections. First is that it would be impossible to get inside an artist's head to find out what they were thinking and, even if they had explained their intentions in public, you couldn't be certain they were telling the truth. Second is that if you chose instead to deduce the intention from the artwork rather than from the artist, you would be guilty of circular thinking: you'd be judging in terms that the artwork itself had given you. And third is that, even if it were possible to identify them, the author's intentions should have no bearing on critical evaluation. A review should be about achievement, not intent. As Wimsatt and Beardsley put it: The design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art [. . .] One must ask how a critic expects to get an answer to the question about intention. How is he to find out what the poet tried to do? If the |soot suoi;0(Klod in doing it. thon thenoem itself shows vvna! \v was trying to do. And if the poet did not succeed, then the poem is not adequate evidence, and the critic must go outside the poem for evidence of an intention that did not become effective in the poem.16 Roland Barthes took a similar line in his 1967 essay 'The Death of the Author', in which he argued that interpreting a work through the lens of the artist's biography inevitably limits its meaning, a post-structuralist idea taken up by Michel Foucault in his 1969 lecture 'What Is an Author?'. If you hold with this thinking, then you'd say your job 22 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE HOW TO LEARN FROM CRITICS OF THE PAST 23 would become even harder when you had to imagine the intentions of playwrights from distant cultures and ancient periods in history. How could the critic possibly know? Even with biographies and research material, you could hope for no more than an educated guess. Further, it's not hard to argue that artists themselves don't know the true intention of their work, Asking a theatremaker what they were aiming for may produce an answer that is eccentric or downright untrue. On other occasions, the intention may not be apparent in the execution. A playwright friend told me of his surprise at the audience's laughter during a rehearsed reading of a work in progress. It hadn't been his intention to make them laugh, although his play was no worse for it. It's impossible for artists to be in control of how their work is received; there are too many external factors at play. Had I been reviewing my friend's rehearsed reading, would it have been reasonable to assume he was trying to be funny? With the audience laughing all around me, how would I have known he wasn't? At the very least, there must be a margin of error. All this may be true, but in the day-to-day job of being a critic, figuring out theatremakers' intentions is rarely a problem. Perhaps it would be different in a more individualistic artform such as poetry, but in the arena of theatre, created collectively, performed live, the clues are generally easy to read. Theatremakers are skilled in making their intentions clear; that's how they connect with audiences. There are many things we can say with confidence. My friend may not have expocU/d Iciii'jhtcr. but no h-.i< |iu n ■<•? vvtHiirJh; ivo suppose* I mis intention had been to write an opera, create a sculpture or choreograph a piece of flamenco. In genera] terms, they knew what he was aiming at; they followed the story and recognized the genre, stylistic conventions, topical references and political perspective. There was room for interpretation, but they knew enough to make a pretty good stab at what he was trying to do. In the majority of cases, a critic would be right to assume the effect the theatremakers achieved was the effect they wanted. Even when theatremakers are unsuccessful, it's not hard to tell what they're being unsuccessful at: the rhythm of a joke suggests comedy; intense expressions suggest melodrama; a live band suggests a musical. These are all pretty good clues about what was intended, whether or not they have succeeded in making you laugh, cry or sing along. As well as this intuitive understanding, we have lots of external evidence from publicity material, geographical location, choice of play, tone of delivery and a whole load of other contextual clues. For the purposes of writing a theatre review, a!! this evidence should be enough to keep the intentional fallacy at bay. Yes, we have to take care to read the intentions correctly and, yes, we'll sometimes come to the wrong conclusions, but our hit rate is pretty high. Even if we can't answer Manzoni's first question with absolute precision and certainty, we can answer it precisely and certainly enough to deal with the next two questions - the first of which ensures that we judge the execution rather than the intention. EXERCISE Write a 250-word review of a show you disliked that focuses exclusively on the intentions of the theatremakers. Does it make things easier or harder to see things from their perspective? How well did they do it? With this question, we are still in the territory of the theatremakers, but we are introducing our own powers of discrimination, If, after the first question, we have determined their intention was to stage a trouser-dropping farce, we would now judge their work in terms of trouser-dropping farces. When the doors jam, the jokes fall flat and the trousers do not drop, we may reasonably say the production has failed in its own terms. When the whole thing runs like clockwork and 24 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE HOW TO LEARN FROM CRITICS OF THE PAST 25 the audience's laughter levels leave them gasping for breath, we can say the company has achieved what it set out to do. At this stage of the thought process, the critic's personal like or dislike of trouser-dropping farces is not relevant. Nor is the observation that you'd rather have been watching some other theatrical genre. Theatremakers get justifiably frustrated when a critic faults them for failing to do something they never intended to do. You can still give praise or find fault, but it has to have some bearing on the thing being attempted. If it doesn't, then you are little different to the neo-classical critics who would mark down anything that didn't have a wholesome moral even if wholesome morals were not the intention. This approach is good for your readers too. From their point of view, the more clearly and dispassionately you can set out what was attempted and what was achieved, the better they can imagine their own reaction. If the reader is a fan of trouser-dropping farces, they'll find it more valuable to know whether this is a good example of a trouser-dropping farce than whether the critic happens to like the genre or not. Even at this level, the critic has tremendous room for expression. No two critics will make the same assessment of a production's multitude of strengths and weaknesses. How well the theatremakers did it is open to wide interpretation and the answer will depend on the critic's experience, discrimination, taste, standards and interpretative powers. Even so, in the absence of a wider critical perspective, if you EXERCISE Write a 250-word review that deliberately misunderstands the theatremakers' intentions, If It's a musical, treat it as a tragedy; if it's a farce, treat it as performance art; if it is aimed at teenagers, treat it like a show for retired holidaymakers; if it's a thriller, treat it as a comedy. How distorted an impression can you create? do not go beyond Manzoni's first two questions, every review is in danger of ending up with the gloriously circular observation that if you like this kind of thing, this is the kind ofthing you will like. So let's move on to question three. Was it worth it? Manzoni asked whether the artist's intentions were 'reasonable' ('ragionevole'). Goethe wanted them to be 'reasonable and prudent' ('vernünftig und verständig'). Even if those are not the exact words we would choose today, we can recognize the impulse. Perhaps we'd ask whether the artist's aims had been bold or provocative, or whether the artist had attempted to move audiences in a way that seemed fresh and original, Any such adjective reflects the values of the time and will change from critic to critic and generation to generation. But whether we're looking for the reasonable and prudent, or the bold and original, when we ask whether the artist's efforts were worth it, we open the door to rich critical discussion. This is the part of the formulation that is most fully about the critic's perspective. The first two questions consider the theatremakers' achievement in their own terms. This third question is about the terms themselves. It's not about whether the theatremakers think their attempt was worth the effort (it would be odd if thev thought otherwise), but whether -n the opinion ot the urine, it was wohn it. Consider the ease ot a show that sets out with mediocre ambitions and achieves them. With only the first two of Manzoni's questions, the critic would have to give the highest praise. 'What were the theatremakers trying to do? Something mediocre. How well did they do it? Perfectly.' With the third question, the critic can call the mediocrity to account: 'Yes, you have done what you set out to do, but what you set out to do was beneath your talents.' For the word 'mediocre', you can substitute any adjective. However well it succeeds in its own terms, a show with left-wing ambitions is unlikely to satisfy a right-wing critic; a show with evangelical ambitions 26 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE HOW TO LEARN FROM CRITICS OF THE PAST 27 couldn't expect to get the approval of an atheist critic; and a show with misogynist ambitions would be challenged by a feminist critic. The terms needn't be negative: 'What were the theatremakers trying to do? Change the world. How will did they do it? With limited success. Was it worth it? Yes, trying to change the world is always worth it.' A critic who strongly approved of what the theatremakers were trying to do may choose to underplay any weaknesses in their level of accomplishment. An ambitious show that fails can seem more worthwhile than an unambitious show that succeeds. To use the distinction we discussed in the last chapter, Manzoni's third question is the one that turns a reviewer into a critic, It takes us away from box-office appeal and shallow like/dislike judgements, and towards deeper questions about value and meaning. Put less stridently, it could be worded, 'What was its worth?' or 'What was interesting about it?' The idea has been expressed in different ways. The critic A.B. Walkley borrowed from Matthew Arnold to say that where the regular theatregoer asks merely whether they are pleased, the critic asks: 'Am I right to be pleased?'17 There are many ambitions a production may have and theability to please is only one them. If the pleasure is at the expense of truth, justice, morality, innovation, radical politics or any other quality the critic holds dear, then maybe it is not right to be pleased. Think of a long-running West End or Broadway musical that has boon slfvnmod by the oritiep vo' lovnd bv audiences, II needn't bo o ynntiriyiytiyr that vdio* Arm :id <:aili •■:! tly pii.n:co nine' enpyyy n to-the straight-forward pleasure it offers, yet the critic complains about its weaknesses in other respects. You often hear producers and fans insisting the critics were wrong to dismiss a show that went on to be a commercial hit. They will give as evidence We Will Rock You, which enjoyed a twelve-year run at London's Dominion Theatre in spite of the derogatory comments of its first-night critics. Their thinking is the same as that of the backer of a 1966 production of Sweef Chanty who sent a weekly copy of the box-office receipts to Stanley Kauffmann after his negative review in The New York Times. That backer would have agreed with Mrs Dangle in Sheridan's The Critic who chastises her husband's critical pretensions on the basis that for managers and authors 'the public is their critic - without whose fair approbation they know no play can rest on the stage'.19 Mr Dangle is a justifiable figure of fun and managers are quite right tofocus primarily on the box office, but this analysis is a misunderstanding of the critic's job - and of Manzoni's third question. Brian Logan, who described We Will Rock You as 'ruthlessly manufactured'20 in his two-star review, was not employed by The Guardian to offer an assessment of the show's commercial potential. It was to give his personal evaluation of the production on that night. It's the job of the market to show what's popular; the job of the critic is to say what's valuable. It does not follow that a popular show is never valuable nor that a valuable show is never popular, but neither is the connection automatic. Answering all three of Manzoni's questions at the same time pushes you towards the most complete form of review. It is one that pays due respect to the theatremakers' achievement as well as recognizing the individual insight of the critic who, in the course of making an argument, will situate the production in its social, historical and aesthetic context. The three questions give you a way to think about a production before you start writing and need have no bearing on how you structure your review. They should, however, keep you away from the two extremes of indulging the theatremakers and indulging your ego. In the next rhaptor, we'll fake i look at whore different entios yiu.a!e 'Poiree'v.-: i! i tli!; Pie i letvV'M 'i i I' lyyo Ivy. ■ eyln-n ins yoo- r: ; lo !l v -it :i 11; i: •< 1-, y* their readers and their personal predilections. EXERCISE Select a review that has been professionally published. Read through it line by line identifying which of Manzoni's three questions the critic is dealing with at any one time. 28 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE Notes 1 Eagleton, Terry (1984), The Function of Criticism, Verso. 2 Littlewood, S.R. (1939), Dramatic Criticism, Pitman. 3 Gray, Charles Harold (1931), Theatrical Criticism in London to 1795, Columbia University Press. 4 Appleton, William W. and Burnim, Kaiman A., eds (1966), The Prompter: A Theatrical Paper (1734-1736), Benjamin Blom, 5 Gray, Charles Harold (1931), Theatrical Criticism in London to 1796, Columbia University Press. 6 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1779), The Critic. 7 Wolter, Jürgen C. (1993), The Dawning of American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746-1915, Greenwood Press. 8 Stratman, Carl J. (1963), 'Scotland's first dramatic periodical: The Edinburgh Theatrical Censor', in Theatre Notebook, Vol. XVII, No. 3. 9 Jones, Chris (2013), Bigger, Brighter, Louder, University of Chicago Press. 10 Anonymous (19 July 1834), 'Theatricals', in The Australian, 11 Anonymous (16 September 1843), 'The rapo act', in the New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator, Vol. IV, issue 281. 12 Prescott, Paul (2013), Reviewing Shakespeare: Journalism and Performance from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Cambridge University Press. 13 Ibid. 14 Mr..-..'-, .->.:>,,..;„.•:■!- a'-:. . ■. - 15 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1821), Über Kunst und Alterthum, Vol. III. 16 Wimsatt, W.K, and Beardsley, Monroe C. (1954), The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, University Press of Kentucky. 17 Walkley, A.B. (1903), Dramatic Criticism, John Murray. 18 Collini, Stefan, ed. (1993), 'The Function of Criticism at the Present Time', in Arnold: Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings, Cambridge University Press, 19 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1779), The Critic. 2D Logan, Brian (15 May 2002), 'We Will Rock You', in The Guardian. 3 HOW TO TAKE ON DIFFERENT CRITICAL STYLES What do you think you are doing? The three questions we take from Alessandro Manzoni - what were the theatremakers trying to do, how well did they do it and was it worth it? - should ensure a respectful, creative and fruitful relationship between critic and theatremaker. But they are only the start of the story. There are many ways to deal with the questions. Should you answer all three? If you do, how much emphasis should you give to each? And should you follow the same pattern in every review? It just depends. A critic recommending a show in an events guide may skim over tho first question ''What were the theatromokors tryinq to do?';, prioritize the second ('How well did they do it?') and ignore the third ('Was it worth it?'). A critic who is in love with the theatre may get no further than the first question because they care only about what the theatremaker is trying to do. A more philosophical critic concerned with theatre's place in the culture may focus almost exclusively on the third: 'What was the worth of the event in the greater scheme of things?' Straight away, this gives us a variety of critical approaches. Add the many ways the questions can be answered, and take into account the different readerships a critic may be writing for, and you end up with a near infinite range. Most critics will use several 30 HOW TO WRITE ABOUT THEATRE HOW TO TAKE ON DIFFERENT CRITICAL STYLES 31 approaches at the same time. See how often you recognize yourself in the descriptions that make up this chapter. The critic as reporter When you read a crime report in your local newspaper, you expect to be totd the facts of the case and not what the journafist thinks about them. The reporter's job is to communicate clearly, accurately and neutrally, with neither opinion nor bias. Their personality should not affect the information being conveyed. The critic as reporter takes the same approach by sticking with our first question - 'What were the theatremakers trying to do?' - and going no further. It is perfectly possible to do this. You just keep to the facts, from the names of the actors to the details of the plot, and describe what happened. You can comment on how the audience reacted, but should stop short of mentioning your own emotional or intellectual reaction: that would be too subjective. Like a report of a news event or a sports fixture, everything must boil down to verifiable facts. If the critic adheres strictly to these rules, their personality will be absent from the review. Think of a local newspaper journalist who, assigned to cover the latest youth-theatre performance, will file the kind of upbeat factual review that gets all the names right, offends no one and keeps the mums and dads happy. It is not necessary, hi>vvovor. f: ii ?h. ■ k ': is ">!!d : i >• ■ ]i,:te s> i t('tirn}■;. I ho irr.t-rc! v> iccotd kiiK.str.-j^l'ito tn« vvijiK ul many yreai critics, writers who have combined factual description with personal flair and critical insight. The earliest precedent is none other than Aristotle himself. As a descriptive critic, the Greek thinker based his theories on what he observed on stage not what he thought he ought to have seen. We think of Kenneth Tynan as the most flamboyant of critics, yet he was responding to a similar impulse when he said the purpose of criticism was 'to give permanence to something impermanent'. The descriptive critic pins down the ephemeral art of theatre for future generations, recognizing that such people are more likely to care about what an event was like than what an individual critic thought of it. Posterity hungers for description, not opinion. Taking on the role of critic as reporter means sharpening your powers of observation and cultivating your descriptive skills. You are all that stands between the theatre and forgetting. EXERCISE Put yourself in the role of critic as reporter and write a 200-word review that contains no judgement and no direct evidence of your own presence. See how much you can say about the success of a show using only your powers of description and reference to external factors such as the behaviour of the audience. The critic as judge Some people are uncomfortable about casting judgement. They think it reeks of self-importance. 'Who are you to say that?' they ask. Isn't it undemocratic for one person to make their opinion heard above everyone else's? When that opinion is couched in forthright journalistic hm; inane tr.- »t - r.| rjiviui: hoe! at k 'ady oaun it or loot Ou intonima seeing it. As soon as you step into the public domain, you can make no such allowances. You can't even be sure they're not reading just to pass the time. As a consequence, unless you are writing for a publication with a precisely defined readership, you have to negotiate a path that suits everyone: neither too basic for the expert nor too erudite for the newcomer; neither too revealing for the would-be audience member nor too circumspect for the reader who'll never see jt; neither too philosophical for the ordinary theatregoer nor too mundane for the cultural theorist. In the next chapter, we'll consider how you can prepare yourself to be ready for any eventuality, | EXERCISE : . Follow the example of critic Gareth K, Vile and write three 200-word reviews of the same show: one aimed at the company, one at potential audiences and one 'at posterity'. Observe how your perspective changes. Notes 1 Agate, James (1922), Alarums and Excursions, George H. Doran Company. 2 Palmer, Scott (2013), Light, Palgrave Macmillan. 3 De Jongh, Nicholas (2000), Politics, Prudery and Perversions: The Censoring of the English Stage, 1901-1968, Methuen. 4 Napoleon, Davi (Spring 1997), 'John Simon, The Art of Criticism No. 4', in The Paris Review, No. 142. 5 Novick, Julius (21 April 1959), 'Eyewitness for Posterity', in The Harvard Crimson. 6 Vile, Gareth K. (April 2014), 'Vile Three Way; The Pitchfork Disney', on Mixcloud (www.mixdoud.com/garethkvile/vile-three-way-the-pitchfork- 7 o:.;. ■<.. ■: .0' ■-■ir':: >. -. ■,.|... .Or- ' ■ ■" ■ ■-. ' - (htt p://theatrebristol writers. net/BAD - N EWS- EVERYON E). 8 Billington, Michael (7 March 2014), 'Do I Hear a Waltz?', in The Guardian. 5 HOW TO DO YOUR RESEARCH A qualified opinion In any discussion about what distinguishes professional critics from casual bloggers, someone always points to the bank of knowledge the professionals have accumulated. J.C. Trewin's Five and Eighty Hamlets^ referred to the number of productions of Shakespeare's play he had seen in the sixty years since 1922. Trewin was not alone. The Daily Mail's Michael Coveney calculated the 2009 Hamlet starring Jude Law was his forty-ninth. You turn to such critics expecting experience and expertise. Their long years in the job seeing five shows a week has given them a wisdom that allows them to contextualize the work with greater accuracy, to discriminate between the excellent and the merely good, and to keep their cool when others have been carried away by the excitement of the moment. Although there's a general truth in this, the argument is not watertight. rm'. ;f wo k\ivc as'-iif: the ncmasinq ;.'"<>l m.; a:-.a pc>l