The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future
Authors: Matt Windman
57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future
Matt Windman
Foreword by
Robert Simonson
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE
e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-2469-3
© 2016 Matt Windman. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without ?permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover image © 2106 iStock
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
First and foremost, I would like to thank each critic who spoke with me for this book and Robert Simonson (who was the editor of
Playbill.com
when I was a college intern there) for writing the foreword. I would also like to thank my wife Heather (who was usually sitting a few feet away from me on our couch, watching television, while I worked on this book), my parents Joseph and Robin Windman (had they not paid for me to go to theater camp as a teenager, my life would have been very different), the editors of
amNewYork
(including Scott Rosenberg and Pete Catapano), the friends I turned to for feedback (particularly David Meyers), and the recent college graduates who helped me to transcribe the interview transcripts (including Lindsey Sullivan, Alice Wertheimer, Nathan Popejoy, Margarita Nehme, Chris Olszewski, Anna Borgida, and Jennifer Sandler).
2. How I Became a Theater Critic
This book has arrived at exactly the right time. The relevance of drama critics has been a common topic of discussion in the theater over the past decade, as newspapers and magazines have either replaced staff reviewers with green, ?low-paid stringers or eliminated critics positions altogether. Twenty-five years from now, or even 10, it’s doubtful that Matt Windman could have compiled this survey, as there would be few practitioners left to interview, and even fewer readers to care what they had to say.
What is the purpose of theater critics? Why do we have them? What is their job? What role do they play in the greater theater community? Are they even part of that community or not? These are questions I found ample occasion to wrestle with from the 1980s to the early 2000s, when I plied the age-old (but by then already-dying) trade at various publications in the Midwest and New York. And these are the questions that Matt Windman puts to his subjects—basically, every significant drama critic in New York, and some from beyond the tri-state area.
The answers are fascinating. Every response shows these writers and reporters—who work at daily newspapers, weekly magazines, and websites with ever-rolling deadlines—to be everything one would hope a critic might be: intelligent, thoughtful, funny, and well-spoken, with a deep knowledge and interest in their profession and the art they cover. Some of them, believe it or not, even come off as damn likeable. This is encouraging to someone like me, who still believes drama critics serve a necessary purpose. And I have no doubt it will be surprising to others who like to dismiss critics
en masse
as untalented hacks.
Matt Windman has done a skillful job of arranging the transcripts from the interviews. The book is not divided by critic, with one long Q&A following another—which would have been deathly dull. Rather, the text is sectioned off by topic, with each critic’s response to a specific question (i.e. What constitutes unethical behavior for a theater critic? Do you feel guilt at writing very negative reviews?) grouped together. This allows him to juxtapose widely divergent takes on important critical matters, often to wonderfully comic effect. Thus, Peter Filichia’s assertion that he functions as an “audience matchmaker” is follow by John Simon’s biting comment, “Being a consumer guide is the most pathetic and inadequate way of looking at drama criticism.”
Moreover, it aptly illustrates just how complex the critic’s task can be, since so many smart people obviously think about it so differently. I was not interviewed by Matt Windman; I gave up my seat on the aisle years ago. But my long years in that chair gave me more than enough time to come up with my own answers to the queries he poses. And, perhaps not surprisingly, my view of critics is rather charitable. To my mind, they are easily the most selfless members of the theater world. For, as much as actors, directors, playwrights, and producers love the stage as a whole, they must ever advocate a very narrow, very particular artistic viewpoint, one that matches with their specific skill set and services the furthering of their career. They are survivalists by necessity. Critics, by comparison, love the whole of the theater. They’re open to the charms of the drama, the comedy, and the musical; the lush, traditional revival and the mold-breaking experimental piece; the megamusical and the chamber drama; the ham actor and the minimalist performer; solo art and sprawling epic; Broadway and Brooklyn Academy of Music. The only ax they grind is in the pursuit of quality, as they perceive it.
And they love the theater more than the artists they review. An audacious claim, I know. But they must. If not, why would they put themselves through night after night in darkened rooms, surrounded by people with scant respect for what they do? Unlike artists, they stand nothing to gain. Free theater tickets and a byline aren’t much in the final accounting of things. Critics will never get rich. They will never be famous. They will never be truly powerful. And they certainly won’t become beloved. They’re lucky if they’re even liked. They do nothing less than sacrifice their lives at the altar of the theater.
As for that most common and simple-minded of all questions put forth by theater artists, “Why have theater critics at all?” to me, the answer has always been clear. Do you consider what you do, your art, to be worthy of thoughtful response, of analysis? Well, so do drama critics. And that’s why they exist.
From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, Robert Simonson was a theater critic for
Time Out New York
, the
Village Voice
and
TheaterWeek
, and otherwise wrote about the stage for the
New York Times
,
American Theatre
,
Variety
, and many other publications. He has published four books on the theater. He has since become one of the nation’s leading cocktail and spirits journalists. His standard joke is that a career in writing about theater drove him to a career of writing about drink.
During the summer of 2008, I came up with the idea of putting together a book composed of interviews with theater critics. At that point, I had already worked as the theater critic of the free daily newspaper
amNewYork
for a few years—even as I was simultaneously a full-time student in college and then law school. I started to work at
amNewYork
in 2004 as a college intern and, through a combination of endless pitching and nagging and lucky breaks, graduated to becoming its regular theater critic.
I was anxious to speak to other critics in order to learn more about the craft. I interviewed about 20 critics and asked them how they became critics, how they went about their jobs, and about their thoughts on the theater, including how they evaluate the work of playwrights, directors, actors, and designers when attending plays and musicals for review.
I thought that no similar book had ever been attempted before. But after some searching around, I did find a similar collection of interviews completed more than two decades ago:
Who Calls the Shots on the New York Stages?
, written by Kalina Stefanova-Peteva and published in 1993. Although quite interesting, these pre–Internet era interviews reflect an extremely different professional landscape than the one we see today. There is also
Under the Cooper Beech: Conversations with American Theater Critics
, written by Jeffrey Eric Jenkins and published in 2004, which focuses primarily on the formation of the American Theatre Critics Association.
After the summer of 2008, I abruptly stopped working on the book. I was about to start my final year of law school, and I was facing the storm and stress of studying for the New York State Bar Exam and graduating without a job at the height of a recession. I also didn’t have a publisher for the book—nor did I even have anyone to help me transcribe the interviews I had conducted so far.
By the winter of 2014, I was still writing theater reviews as a freelance journalist every week for
amNewYork
while simultaneously working by day as an attorney (which remains my primary means of financial support). The interviews I conducted with theater critics back in 2008 were sitting on a digital recorder in my sock drawer. I often thought of restarting work on the book, but how could I manage that? Between being a lawyer and a theater critic, I was working day and night. I had also just gotten married. But I wanted the book to be seen—now more than ever—considering the extent to which theater criticism has changed in recent years. But to do so, I needed to discard the old interviews and start all over again. Too much had changed since 2008.
Now, it wouldn’t be enough to just ask critics about how they landed their jobs and what they believe are the ingredients of a great play or musical. Since 2008, prominent critics such as David Rooney, Howard Shapiro, Peter Filichia, Jeremy Gerard, and Michael Sommers have lost their jobs in layoffs or forced retirements. Having a theater critic (or at least a full-time or a paid one) is now seen as a luxury rather than a necessity by many, if not most, publications. At the same time, the number of people writing about shows on Internet message boards, blogs, and social media sites has exploded, raising questions of whether it’s still necessary for a publication to employ its own critic, whether message board users are legitimate critics, and whether anything could be done to make professional theater criticism more valued by both readers and employers.
I got back in touch with virtually every critic I spoke with in 2008. I also spoke with other New York critics and prominent regional critics like Peter Marks of Washington, D.C., Robert Hurwitt of San Francisco, Christine Dolen of Miami, and Chris Jones of Chicago. For a touch of Canada, I called up Richard Ouzounian, whom I was familiar with based on my annual trips to the Stratford Festival in Ontario.
I also interviewed Michael Riedel of the
New York Post
. Although he is technically a theater gossip columnist rather than a critic, he has no qualms about sharing his own appreciation—or lack thereof—for the latest shows in his weekly columns. (As I write this introduction, Riedel is skeptically questioning all of the rave reviews for the hit hip-hop musical
Hamilton
and the perception that it is a “game-changer.”) I even interviewed Perez Hilton, who originally trained to be an actor and has posted theater reviews on his popular gossip blog alongside the latest on the Kardashians.
In all, I conducted over 50 interviews, each of which lasted anywhere from a half hour to two hours. They were done in person or by phone, plus one or two by email correspondence. I transcribed the interviews myself, along with some invaluable help from friends and various college students with an interest in theater and/or journalism.