Nothing personal

Is the relationship between artist and critic as fraught as ever? Chief theatre critic PETER CRAWLEYdiscusses recent criticism of theatre reviews in this newspaper

NOT TOO LONG ago, I stepped into a theatre foyer on the opening night of a new production whereupon I was promptly offered a hug. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to a professional theatre critic that often. A few weeks previously, I had written a rather besotted review about a show that my would-be hugger had produced, one that had already been very well received and which had closed by the time my review was published. I briefly considered the ethics involved and thought, ‘What the hell’, and told her so. But another theatre professional was within earshot and offered a sober counterbalance. “The corollary, Peter, is that you have to accept punches, too.”

Criticism, it is important to be reminded, is never intended personally but is almost invariably taken that way. How could it not be? Any piece of theatre is the result of the intense effort made by dozens of individuals, a feat of collected energy, intense risk and complex collaboration between creator (whether writer or deviser), producer, director, performer, designer, composer, usher, and on and on – until the end result is so densely and subtly layered it is almost impossible to say with any certainty who is responsible for what. When the performer Karl Shiels brought the house down in The Comedy of Errors at the Abbey by flashing one impeccably timed cheesy grin at the audience, for example, who deserves the credit? The writer whose line not only encourages the gesture but is being neatly subverted by it? The director who has achieved a tone of performance which can accommodate it? The actor who has never deployed that wickedly effective trick in any performances I’ve seen of his before? The lighting designer who allows us to see it in just the right way? The cast who complement but don’t distract? The dentist? The audience who were attentive and completed the gag with their laughter? Or might it have been all the above?

To anyone who suggests that a piece of criticism should be commensurate with the length of time and accumulation of effort necessary to arrive at an opening night, a 500-word review written overnight by one person doesn’t seem adequate properly to accommodate, contextualise and analyse the complexity of a single gesture in a production and still leave room to say whether or not the show succeeded.

It is both reassuring and worrying that what we might call “the latest crisis in theatre criticism” is as old as the hills. Critics, complained acerbic English theatre manager Lilian Baylis “form too quick an impression of work it has taken my dear producer and his boys and girls a whole week to prepare”. It’s easy to dismiss this remark as a pithy echo from an age before professionalism, but when AA Gill or Nicholas Hytner or Time Out New York or the director of the Abbey Theatre choose to swing a cudgel in the direction of theatre criticism, or even a specific theatre critic, such sentiments still hit a nerve. The question is, is the relationship between artist and critic getting any better?

WRITING RECENTLY IN the books pages of this paper’s Weekend Review supplement, the director of the Abbey Theatre, Fiach Mac Conghail, took a sharp look at theatre criticism – in The Irish Times in particular – and didn’t like what he saw. “The problem resides in some critics’ lack of understanding as to what occurs before you watch the play,” he wrote. “The relationship between the theatre-maker and the critic in Ireland is impoverished. Media outlets, such as The Irish Times, give scant critical coverage to theatre productions. A new Irish play and a production can be in gestation (or pre-production) for at least two years and yet this newspaper can only provide less than 500 words to analyse it critically.”

It is encouraging to find support on my behalf for an extended word-count, and there are serious points here that ought to be addressed seriously.

A critic must necessarily be an outsider with insider knowledge. If critics become too close to a production they lose the objectivity necessary to evaluate it. “To understand all is to forgive all” goes the French proverb, and though each critic should want a production to succeed, it seems a disservice to both audience and theatre-maker if a critic becomes either an apologist or a cheerleader.

Conversely, too much distance from the process of creating theatre, and a critic may still be able to discern where a show succeeds or fails, but will find it much harder to say why. There has to be some middle ground. Mercifully, I think there is. Beyond the practical and theoretical training in theatre provided by universities, there are, finally, practical courses in theatre criticism in UCD, NUI Galway and elsewhere, which seek to develop a methodology and aesthetics of criticism. Jocelyn Clarke and Karen Fricker were early proponents of such courses in Trinity College Dublin and I benefited from their instruction.

Still, neither a degree in theatre, an MA in journalism, a fading memory of student productions, years of critical experience or a national platform automatically entitle anyone to be a critic. An education is ongoing, and limited only by your appetite and curiosity. Interviews with artists provide a critic with some insight into their process. Visiting a rehearsal, if it’s carefully managed and involves mutual trust between artists and visitor, offers an invaluable glimpse of what Mac Conghail refers to as the “miracles” and “prosaic accidents of the creative process”. Indeed, by inviting Patrick Lonergan, the author of Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era, to “spend some time with us” at the Abbey, Mac Conghail demonstrated an openness to engaging with his critics.

Still, there were also signs that the age-old antagonisms between artist and critic, whether real or imagined, still persist. “The days of an Irish Times review improving (or reducing) ticket sales at the Abbey Theatre are diminishing,” Mac Conghail wrote, “as the reader loses any sense of a continuous relationship with its theatre critics.” Both theatre-makers and critics are complicit in the assumption that reviews have no impact on box office – it liberates the critic from thinking about the financial consequences of a verdict, flatters them that they are in no way providing a consumer guide, and reassures a theatre company that negative notices make no impact. Scanning the approving press quotations attached to posters, advertisements, listings and so on, suggests an endorsement of critical authority, however, and if even good reviews have no impact on ticket sales, it seems a waste of ink to draw attention to their superlatives (“triumph”, “winner”, “theatre at its best”, and so on).

Why not maintain the fallacy that reviews do matter to a show’s prospects? It may not be true, but it could be a helpful fiction that makes every critic believe that their job carries a deep responsibility.

CRITICISM IS CERTAINLY not the only method of assessing whether a work has a deeper value. But if it’s done well it respects the art form by not making allowances or excuses for it. Criticism asks what this live event means to this place at this time, offers hugs where they are deserved and doesn’t pull punches when they seem necessary. Nor does any single critic have the last word. Usually we just have the first. A review may be the start of a conversation, the first point of contact between production and outsider (with no vested interest), one that provides something to spark off, accept or reject, and which now exists in a wide ecology of critical opinion. There is nothing more deadly than consensus.

Consequently, I’ve always seen it as my job not merely to dispense an opinion, but to show how I arrive at one, to do so in as informed a way as possible, and in a style that requires some thought and effort. And I trust that the reader will decide whether or not my reasoning seems sound. I am immensely privileged to be able to do that here.

People often suggest that a theatre critic is a frustrated playwright, a frustrated director or even a frustrated actor. I think it’s more helpful to consider us professional audience members. Artist, audience and critic at least have common interests. We want the theatre to be better. We want it to provoke or challenge or move or entertain or surprise us. We want it to matter. An adjunct to this is that criticism should matter too. It must work harder to break through the surface of PR, realise that interpretation is not about “giving the right answer”, and above all it should be critical – in the best sense of the word – in order to properly exalt and question the art form.

Everyone’s a critic, they say, and blogs, comment boxes, status updates and – Lord help us – Tweets have only made word of mouth speedier and more effective. Academic criticism is, at its best, theoretically path-breaking and blessed with an illuminating scope of reference. At its most obfuscatory and jargon-dependent, however, it only gets us so far. The professional critic needs to acknowledge the strengths of an empowered, articulate audience and the insights of academia and to learn to write better if they are to compete. But there has to be distance. If the critic and the artist can’t be friends, they must not be enemies, neither sharing hugs nor trading punches.