An Interview with -- Me! -- On Extra Criticum (Part 7 of 7)

I was very flattered when Rolando Teco, whose new blog Extra Criticum is pretty damn cool and has a lot of potential, asked me to participate in an experiment in which his various writers and contributors would ask a bunch of questions of me as a critic. Well, the seventh installment is up (only the bonus remains). And who knows who I'll alienate this time!

Well, actually, it would appear I've alienated Aaron Riccio, but I'll get to that.

Here's the tease:

Q: Have you ever written a review that you deeply regret and would take back (or completely rework) if you could? What would you like theatre artists to get out of your reviews of their work?

A: I did when I was younger—I started writing reviews for The Village Voice and other publications when I was 22, and oh, oh, oh did I say things I shouldn’t have said…I just pray that when I get to the Jewish equivalent of the Pearly Gates, there isn’t mold in my potato salad...

Now, I guess to my regret I have upset Aaron Riccio on this issue. I responded via Extra Criticum and now await the onslaught. Pesky semicolons. What awful creatures.

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Thoughts on Aaron Riccio's Thoughts on Theatrical Criticism

Aaron Riccio put a post up last Sunday on the ethics of critics changing their minds -- whether, in an age of blogposts that are easily published or unpublished, it is ethical to modify a review if a critic should experience a major change of heart. Aaron writes:

We've allowed John Simon to change his mind entirely about Sondheim over the course of 40 years (though the plays themselves haven't changed, only the times), so why not compress that and allow -- nay, expect -- that critics give themselves the room, even if only on the Internet to self-correct? Wouldn't that be an excellent use of blogging? The PR firms would still have their blurbs, and if the internet really is as shabby a tool as they think, any later corrections wouldn't really change those (not like the pull quotes are always honest, either).

Well, I have to digress a bit and say I'm not sure we've "allowed" John Simon to do anything, really, except degrade and terrorize theatre artists through the use of gorgeously styled prose for 40 years. Still -- and more to Aaron's point -- it's hard for me to imagine a blogger going back in 40 hours, much less 40 years, and changing the essential gist of a post. Were lightning to strike and a critic to experience a change of heart, it seems to me that writing a new post, one that might consider the ideas in the original post and explain how the change of heart occurred, what drove it, what inspired it, would be more instructive for the reader -- and for the critic, too.

I agree, meanwhile, that the great thing about the Web is having the ability to ameliorate grammar and spelling, or to use the form's real-time capabilities to engage readers -- letting ticket-buyers comment on critics' views, for example.

True, there's lots of this already -- in traditional media as well as, of course, the blogosphere. But there's actually another reason I mention this particular use of the Web. Before I reviewed The Homecoming the other night, I went into the New York Times archive and reread Walter Kerr's review of the play. If I may, I want to just share one of Kerr's most inert, obnoxious, eye-popping ledes:

Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming" consists of a single situation that the author refuses to dramatize until he has dragged us all, aching, through a half-drugged dream.

Yikes, guess he didn't like it.

Anyway, as I was researching, I noticed that the Times used to encourage people to write in with their criticisms of the critic's criticisms and would publish it -- I'm talking voluminously. And much of it was quite literate. Sure, the Times still publishes letters, obviously, but they're never long enough to indulge in the kind of deep engagement found in the pages of the Times 40 years ago -- ditto the comments one can sometimes post on the Times' website.

Well, that's what a blog can really do: forcibly insert the critic into a conversation.

Back to the question. To me, it seems that entirely changing the substance of a review -- that is, doing a true 180 -- leaves the critic vulnerable to charges of intellectual dishonesty. If you're a person who likes to attack Hillary Clinton as someone who arrives at her political views by wagging her finger in the wind, it's easy to imagine someone accusing a critic of doing the same thing, say, after reading what his or her colleagues think of a particular play.

Mind you, I'm not saying such an accusation would be fair. I'm just saying it could be made.

Which actually raises one other thought. Personally, I don't believe critics who say they don't read each other's work or discuss what they think. I think a fair number do -- probably well after the reviews are all out, or as it strikes their fancy.

And I do think it's a good thing in the long run if a critic is open enough to other views that their own thinking might evolve over time -- so we're back to Aaron's John Simon example.

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More Hunka Fallout

So Aaron Riccio posted a comment on my prior blog entry on George Hunka giving professional ethics the wagging middle-finger. My response is below.

Aaron writes,

Just a note of clarification, as Hunka got his tickets the same way I did, through an offer from Playwrights Horizon's publicity department. They asked for comments to be posted, regardless of content, in return for tickets. That's what they got: George just writes like a critic possessed. Think of it as a very lucid blog. When I accepted tickets, I asked very carefully if they wanted a REVIEW or a BLOG: they chose the latter, which as far as I'm concerned, pretty much frees me of any obligation (as a print/online critic) to wait for an embargo. So on that, I think George is off the hook. For the theaters, however, I do think it's dangerous to actively SEEK comments for preview performances if they're not able to handle negative, Deuce-like hype, as well as positive, audience building comments along the theatrosphere.

My thought is...

1) Just because there's a pimp doesn't mean you have to raise your legs and fuck everyone who walks through the door.

2) How about addressesing the grievous and savage, irredeemable wrong that a pre-review review does to the artists? This non-mea culpa -- "they offered us tickets, we're innocent" -- is like blaming conscription in the German army for mowing down a town of Jews.

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Bravo to Aaron Riccio

...whose smackdown of the just-announced Spike Lee-directed Broadway revival of Stalag 17 on his blog, Metadrama, is right on target. Also, why has this announcement been greeted with almost no blogosphere reaction? Are people afraid to actually say, "What up, yo? What's he doin'?" Does no one think this idea is as nutty as that other announcement, earlier this year, that the all-black revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was going to kick 273-time Tony-winner Audra McDonald to the curb in favor of some more impressive thespian like Beyonce? I mean, great, Spike Lee wants to direct a play, but Stalag 17? How about -- as Aaron suggests -- a new play? Where's the outrage? Where's the shock? Where's the beef? Where's Susan Powter? Stop the insanity!

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