Leonard Jacobs, National Theatre Editor and theatre critic for Back Stage and New York Press, is also the mind behind the popular theatre blog, Clyd Fitch Report. Brave soul that he is, Leonard agreed to be our first "Critic on the Spot" by fielding questions from some of our Extra Criticum authors.
Every few days, we'll post a new Q&A between Leonard and one of us. Here's #4 in our series, this one from David Licata.
Q:
Have you ever seen a play and felt like you had nothing to say about it, and if so, what did you do? Is it possible to identify which characteristics of a production tend to cause this reaction?
A:
The easiest reviews to write are about the shows you feel passionately about. This is another way of saying that ambivalence can be absolutely deadly to a critic and the process of writing the review will feel like—and usually read like—drudge work. It does happen to me. I have different ways of dealing with it, including avoidance at all costs, which usually doesn't thrill my editors. Sometimes it's possible to identify what characteristics made you feel so blah, but mostly for me it's more an educated guess as to why I'm not "feeling it." You know, theatre critics sometimes talk about "chemistry" and "energy" in their reviews and I'm not always sure whether any of us really know what we mean—myself included. You get the feeling that something didn't cohere somehow, that something's off. At least in the cases when you've seen some icky-icky-poo-poo show (that's very important dramaturgical term), you can easily enumerate the issues. Similarly, when you've witnessed something promising or exciting or provocative, even if its flawed, you can excitedly detail all the reasons why. The result of being unaffected is affected ennui.
