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 the first, from John Yearley.
Question posed by E.C. author John Yearley:
Q:
Not so much of a question but something I would be interested to hear you comment on. I heard John Patrick Shanley say that the difference between theatre criticism and restaurant criticism is that you never doubt that the restaurant critic actually likes food. You sometimes don't know that the theatre critic really likes theatre. I find myself thinking that a lot when I read theater reviews. Do you? And is this even important?
A:
Well, I’m likely going to get into trouble saying this, especially as I probably have more respect (and often envy) for playwrights than any other stage practitioner, but I do find that when playwrights lob criticism against critics—even when it’s sort of shrouded in humor and playfulness as in the Shanley quote—there’s really some other agenda going on, such as, oh, I don’t know, a playwright who has taken a few knocks from critics seizing upon an opportunity to even the score for something that some critic said in print about their supposedly unassailable work. Stuff like that.
Anyway, I hesitate to suggest that all theatre critics don’t love theatre, just as I very much hesitate to suggest that all food critics love food. This sort of isn’t the point in any event because what does loving theatre or food really mean? I mean, is Shanley saying that if you love the theatre you’ll never find fault in the work? I’d argue that if you love the theatre, your criticism might well be that much harsher—tough love. If you’re in love with something, what are the odds you’re going to see the flaws? If you see the flaws, doesn’t that suggest you love it more?
We all have to doubt critics to some extent, don’t we, because unless their taste is in all measure, at all times, in all possibilities, and at all moments just like our own—and that’s impossible—there are always going to be times when we have to wonder what some critic ate for breakfast or what crawled up their ass and died.
There’s another aspect to your question: the history of food criticism isn’t as long as dramatic criticism, and its traditions and challenges are different. Gael Greene and Ruth Reichl wear disguises to avoid detection whereas a theatre critic is on the aisle for all to observe. When we’re talking about dramatic criticism, also, we’re talking about either philosophers and theorists or we’re talking about daily reviewing (and I’m not sure Schlegel and Hegel cared about their bagel). It’s in daily reviewing that Shanley’s comment, I think, really comes in. The history of daily reviewing is simply littered with people literally scooped off the sports desk or wherever and sent off to a play without any knowledge of the art or craft of the stage. That’s terrible, and to the extent that we may, on occasion, continue to find uneducated, misguided people reviewing theatre, practitioners such as Shanley are quite rightly going to question the validity of what they dole out. (This is another reason I argue that critics have a moral obligation to try their hand at being practitioners, but that’s another story.) So it’s really more than love at stake. At the end of the day, I’d argue that it’s up to Shanley to separate the shredded wheat from the chafing dish.
