My title is an ironic and much quoted phrase in theatrical circles where critics and artists are locked in a never-ending death struggle. I can speak with some (albeit slight) expertise on this subject having been, in an amateur way, both a performer/director and a critic. Many of my reviews of my fellow members' efforts in our AmDram society's monthly magazine were the cause of much wailing and gnashing of teeth, to say nothing of not just the loss of many a friendship but also the birth of some deep-rooted animosities. It was the cause of some wry amusement on my part that so many actors and directors who never stopped banging on about the need for 'Truth' in what they were doing on stage could not bear the sight of it in a review. As regular readers of this blog will have discovered, I am not exactly sensitive to other people's feelings but, as I reminded my 'victims', if you volunteer to go up on stage and take people's money off them for the supposed privilege and pleasure of watching you, then you must take the brickbats with the same equanimity as the bouquets. Alas (or perhaps, hoorah) I have only one extant example of my critical style which I have edited because it was written for private circulation within my club:
Health Warning: This review constitutes Cruel & Inhuman Punishment. Those of a sensitive nature should ignore it and instead read the Chairman’s report [...].
I was confused – so no change there, then! - following my visit to this production. Why, I kept asking myself, am I looking at the inside of yet another uni-coloured box? Admittedly the box for [****] was relieved by the odd window or door if not anything else, and the un-adorned box for [*******] was a sort of dark maroon which was at least fairly easy on the eyes, but for [**** ****] we had a yellow box which was so brightly lit that I wished I had brought my sun-glasses. There was no texture or decoration to relieve this flat, eye-aching yellow except for a mysterious white circle on the back wall whose significance was never explained or alluded to. [. . .] Only three light settings were apparent: the ‘hurt-your-eyes’ setting, the dim setting and (I think) an even dimmer setting. During these dim settings there appeared to be two pools of slightly brighter light on the stage but most of the time the actors stood in the darkness!
This reviewer took some pleasure, no, strike that, some vague interest, in trying to guess what the two redundant constructions were for which stood, mostly unused, throughout the production serving only to constrict the movement of actors and to confine them to the down stage area. Are we so bereft of stage managers that no-one could have moved them off and on? One of them was what I can only describe as “a stairway to paradise” since it had steps going up to nowhere which was just as well because nobody used it except, very occasionally, to stand or sit on the bottom step only. So not just a step too far but several steps too far! The other, a peculiar double-cube construction, provided [one of the characters] with a platform approximately 2” high upon which he stood for approximately 2 minutes! Its other use was as an entirely unconvincing brazier. Again, was it quite beyond the wit of the production team to find a replica brazier of some sort?
And so on and on, ad nauseum. You may wonder why I made such unpleasant waves in what was, and still is, a small and friendly amateur theatrical club, apart that is, from the obvious fact that I am by nature a snapping, snarling SoB? Well, the fact is that I cared, I cared very much about what we did and how we did it. That might sound pompous, and I do realise that it also implies that my fellow 'thesps' somehow didn't care, or at least, didn't care as much as me, which is rather high-handed. But truths needed to be told - and I do realise that in artistic terms some truth is subjective - not least because the natural and kindly tendency of thesps everywhere to wrap themselves and their comrades in the warm blanket of self-congratulation can only act like a cancerous growth in the artistic body concerned.
I am provoked to these thoughts by an essay in the Financial Times by Francis Wheen on the subject of a recent critical imbroglio concerning the literary critic, Lynn Barber. She sank her (critical) teeth into a book, Seven Days in the Art World, written by someone called Sarah Thornton. I am not going to link to this book because it is obvious that Ms. Thornton is a high falutin' prat with an excess of ultra sensitivity over commonsense. What happened was that Ms. Barber, a critic renowned for calling a spade a bloody shovel, made a simple but costly mistake:
“Sarah Thornton”, Barber wrote in the offending article, “is a decorative Canadian with a BA in art history and a PhD in sociology and a seemingly limitless capacity to write pompous nonsense.” So far so good: this is what libel lawyers call “mere vulgar abuse”, which is a fine old literary tradition. (Think of Mark Twain on James Fenimore Cooper: “There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.” Or, come to that, William Faulkner on Mark Twain: “a hack writer who would not have been considered fourth-rate in Europe.”)
Then Barber made her costly mistake: “Thornton claims her book is based on hour-long interviews with more than 250 people. I would have taken this on trust, except that my eye flicked down the list of her 250 interviewees and practically fell out of its socket when it hit the name Lynn Barber. I gave her an interview? Surely I would have noticed?”
Ah, memory, what a fickle friend! Ms. Barber had indeed been interviewed by Ms. Thornton and that was all it took for Ms. Thornton to reach for her lawyers instead of writing to The Telegraph and Ms. Barber and demanding a retraction and an apology. Instead she claimed that Ms. Barber's review was "malicious" and the court upheld her claim to the tune of £65k!
All of this, of course, provides Francis Wheen with an ideal opportunity to quote some of the better and more amusing examples of real, below the belt, critical uppercuts whilst also explaining the very real difficulties of criticising the work of people people who, whilst not exactly close friends, are those with whom you regularly socialise. The danger is apparent to all:
Leafing through the book section of a Sunday newspaper last weekend I started underlining the stale old phrases – “deftly chronicled”, “extraordinarily fascinating”, “effortlessly readable”, “finely crafted”, “gravely compelling”. All sincerely meant, no doubt; but as I chewed on this bland pap, God how I longed for a flagon of vinegar!
It's a good essay and worth reading in full:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/380d5122-bdb1-11e0-babc-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1UGHFXGBG
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