Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Critics aren't obligated to support theater we don't like.
Storefront Rebellion: "I'm reading with some fascination the comment debate on Chris Jones's review of Route 66's High Fidelity, which opened Monday night. I was there, but I'm not reviewing the show for TOC, so I'll leave my own opinions of the show aside until John Beer's review hits on Monday. But the bedrock of the comment by 'allison' that kicked off the conversation, and some of the comments that follow, deal in what I consider to be fallacies about a critic's job description; they also address some of what I talked about in my post here earlier this week. Not that he needs it from me, but I feel compelled to defend Chris a bit."
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5 comments:
This goes exactly the same for everyone involved. No one should support theater even if they don't like it. Unless someone tells you the truth about what they got out of a performance, you can never grow as an artist. If our teachers just told us that they thought we did a "good job" because we worked hard, that wouldn't help us in anyway with our process.
It is a waste of time for a critic to write an untrue review. The entire job of a critic is to be consistent. Once readers get a feel for a critic's tastes they will be able to trust them and use their opinion to gage every show. If critics started to say that everything is worth seeing people would soon realize they would have to judge everything for themselves. This would scare people into staying home away from the theater more than a bad review.
As some of the comments on the original post said, the reviews are generally subjective. At best you find a reviewer you agree with and you count on the similar taste in whatever is being reviewed to make sure that you can trust future reviews. As soon as a reviewer starts to say that everything is great then they've ceased to be useful as a reviewer, unless you also think everything is great.
This summer marked my first experience with getting a show I worked on reviewed. I will preface by saying that most of the reviews were very flattering and positive, but one particularly scathing review from the Chicago Tribune pointed out a few flaws in our production that broke my rather jaded view of the show. As tough as it was to read as our tiniest problems were scrutinized, I really appreciated the counterpoint opinion and it opened up the internal questions of "What would I do differently about this production if I was in charge of putting it together?" Overall, it actually turned out to be a positive experience in developing my senses for making successful shows.
I agree with what Ariel and Molly said. There is absolutely no point in giving a good review to a bad performance. If the actors, directors, designers, and techies are mature about it, they won't take the crits personally, but rather they will improve future performances. It drives me nuts when people say that we should never criticize anything. That doesn't mean we should acid-coat everything we say, but no one learns about their mistakes when they only get compliments.
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