Theatre Reviews

“Hey, asshole: you had your say”:The Performance of Theatre Criticism Oona Hatton (bio) In April 2010, Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) staged a production of The Taming of the Shrew with a new induction by playwright Neil LaBute. In a review for Time Out Chicago (TOC), theatre critic Caitlin Montanye Parrish lauded the production’s direction, designers, and ensemble, but was unimpressed by LaBute’s additions: “don’t look for meaning in the contemporary scaffolding,” she warns. Within hours, a writer identifying her-/himself as LaBute left a scathing response in the comments section of the online review. Calling Parrish’s piece a “sorry excuse for theatrical criticism,” “neil labute” launched a spirited exchange that grew to include over fifty comments from an estimated twenty-five participants.1 Posters expounded on the challenges of subsisting as an artist, the nature of Chicago’s theatre community, neil labute’s true identity, and, sporadically, the production in question. Throughout, the role of the critic remained labute’s central concern. Denouncing them as “freeloaders,” he writes, “critics are the one element that is of little or no use to the creative process (and one of the very few who don’t ever pay for a ticket!) even the audience lends some creative element to the experience of theater—the critic will always be reactive and parasitic.”2 Labute’s retort and the posts that follow exemplify the rapid and abundant response to which any contemporary theatre review is subject. The comments thread illustrates how the internet has transformed criticism by offering readers/consumers the chance to weigh in, immediately and visibly.3 In an era of compulsive (even compulsory) public assessment, the web is rife with similar discussions, equal parts adulation and bile, profundity and pettiness. Nevertheless, “L’Affaire LaBute Parrish” is a unique and fertile case study among them.4 There is, first of all, labute’s active participation; sixteen of the sixty posts are his (the next most frequent commenter has six). An array of stakeholders take part in the conversation, including posters who identify as theatre artists, spectators, and reviewers. References to Chicago theatre anchor the discussion in a specific time and place, making it a useful record of local history. At the same time, the thread demonstrates how theatrical criticism circulates both locally and more broadly in the era of electronic information. (The discussion spawned conversations on at least two other Chicago theatre blogs, as well as earning mention in the comments section of a review of another LaBute production in New York.)5 This essay describes a creative and scholarly project designed to explore public response to online theatre reviews, a phenomenon I term crowdsourcing theatre criticism. Briefly, the project is an adaptation of the TOC/labute comments thread into an online radio play performed by Chicago actors. The play dramatizes shifting trends in theatre reviewing, interrogating assumptions, including my own, about who is eligible to participate in theatre criticism; it is also an inquiry into the form that criticism might take. I argue that the piece contains five strata of commentary, beginning with Parrish’s review of CST’s production of Shrew; labute’s critique of that review follows. The third layer is composed of the subsequent posts, which take up the arguments made by both Parrish and labute, as well as bringing in related concerns about the production and consumption of theatre. Fourth is my mediation of the comments as director and editor of the radio play. Finally, in their performance of the text, the actors provide their perspectives on the ideas and identities presented by the posters. The resulting piece is more than the sum of its parts. Due to the interacting layers of commentary, the number of distinct voices, the range of themes, and the relative accessibility of the [End Page 103] digital recording, I argue that this “performance of criticism” offers a viable, even superior alternative to the traditional theatre review. To develop this idea, I begin with a brief discussion of current debates on theatre criticism, then turn to the play, describing the critical work accomplished (or attempted) by each round of commentators, including how she/he/they engage their predecessors in...

It considers specific features of genre evolvement of theatre reviews. Analyzing theater review transformations from the 1960s to the 2020s, the author notes that understanding the changes in the morphology of a theatrical review can help study tendencies in the modern criticism in general, and in the parody genre in particular. Reading closely theatre reviews of the literary weekly “Literature and Art” of 1960 and those of the same literary weekly of the 2020s and of the social and political newspaper “SB. Belarus Today” of the recent years, the author underscores that, unlike in the 1960s, in the 2020s journalists seem to detach from the professional circle of problems. The research marks that criticism has come to respond to journalism materials themselves (self-criticism) as well as to the cultural and social context of modern art rather than to particular fiction texts, theatrical premiers as information agenda. It also highlights that criticism and parody have a lot in common through their journalistic nature: the analysis of artistic phenomena in the modern culture. Yet, recently, in the changing medium space, criticism makes parody not fiction or journalistic text, but the communicative process, which has created some new roles of the critic, the author and the reader. It concludes that social and cultural situation around theatre determines the changes in the genre of theatre reviews in the modern outlets, putting them into pre-journalistic phase or literary-educational mode of associations and contexts. As a result, both viewers and critics develop new qualities.

A Review of Theatre and Politics by Zygmunt Hubner. Translated from the original Polish by Jadwiga Kosicka with a Foreword by Daniel Gerould and Afterword by Andrzej Wajda. Northwestern University Press, 1992, 222 pp., ISBN: 0–8101–1022–9 (hardback)

Review of Theatre and Politics in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland by Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill

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In this paper Sıla Şenlen Güvenç surveys the key plays staged in the run-up to the Scottish Independence Referendum of September 2014, with special emphasis on the six Theatre Uncut plays – Rob Drummond's Party Pieces, A. J. Taudevin's The 12.57, and Lewis Hetherington's The White Lightning and the Black Stag (composed in 2013), and Davey Anderson's twin plays, Fear and Self-Loathing in West Lothian and Don't Know, Don't Care, and Kieran Hurley's Close from 2014. Written prior to the referendum and performed together for the first time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014, these plays became even more meaningful with developing events in the United Kingdom, especially Brexit and the potential for a second independence referendum in Scotland. The plays reflect many of the issues discussed in both the ‘Yes Scotland’ and ‘Better Together’ campaigns. Sıla Şenlen Güvenç is currently Associate Professor at Ankara University's Department of English Language and Literature. Besides articles and theatre reviews on English drama, she is the author of ‘Words as Swords’: Verbal Violence as a Construction of Authority in Renaissance and Contemporary English Drama (2009) and ‘The World is a Stage, but the Play is Badly Cast’: British Political Satire in the Neo-classical Period (in Turkish, 2014).

Bigger Than “Ben-Hur”: The Book, Its Adaptations, and Their Audiences

Theodor Fontane is known for devoting a large proportion of his novels to conversations between his characters. By giving his characters their own particular tone, Fontane uses language as a means of characterization and adds to the realism of the narration. Not only in Fontane’s novels, but also in his critical writing does language play a major role. In his theater reviews Fontane combines his criticism of dramatists, dramas, performances and actors with reflections on language which shed light on his aesthetic beliefs as a realist. Disapproving of artificial poetic language, Fontane favours simple language which optimally matches the situation. According to Fontane, the choice of language is vital for the effect of a play performed on stage. It is particularly the dramatist’s ability of finding the right tone which determines the success of creating a realistic representation of life in the dramatic art form, of putting realism on stage. (CB)

Kenneth Tynan was one of the most celebrated, controversial and prolific journalists in both the US and UK during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As a theatre reviewer, the appearance of his writings became as much events as the productions he dissected. Amongst his vast journalistic oeuvre was an extraordinary series of profiles, mainly of prominent figures in the worlds of theatre, film and arts. This paper considers the ethical aspects of both his writing and profiling techniques – with particular reference to Janet Malcolm’s critique of journalists’ conventional relationships with their sources. Stuart Allan’s notions of the journalist as an ‘interpretative performer’ and ‘stylistic improviser’ will be seen as crucial to both analysing and appreciating Tynan’s eclectic range of reporting techniques. In addition, the ‘exploitative’ dimensions of Tynan’s display of literary skills will be explored. The paper concludes with the argument that Tynan deliberately confounds the ethics of conventional profiling with the special ‘intimacy’ and collaborative nature of his portraits

As in most English-speaking nations, the success or otherwise of a production in Australia is heavily dependent upon its critical reception: yet, argues Michael Morley, much Australian reviewing is both ill-equipped and ill-informed for such a responsibility. Michael Morley is himself currently theatre critic of The National Times, and has also written for The Advertiser, Theatre Australia, and the Sydney Morning Herald. A Brecht-Weill scholar, who has worked as musical director on a number of productions in Sydney and Adelaide, Michael Morley is Professor of Drama at Flinders University in South Australia.

Film and Theater Review and Commentary: Editor's Introduction: Hitchcock's Eye

The work is devoted to the interwar literary and social publicism by Irena Krzywicka. It is divided into four chapters. These are actually separate studies related to one another in the form of growing and expansion. The aim of the first study is to present a wide cultural context from which Krzywicka’s consciousness and literary output arise. In its historical aspect the following periods have been distinguished: growing up in the exile family of intelligentsia, education and marriage with Jerzy Krzywicki, the son of Ludwik Krzywicki, a great scholar; cooperation with the newspapers “Blok” [Bloc] and “Wiadomości Literackie” [Literary News] (since 1924); friendship with Tadeusz Żeleński-Boy (since 1928). In its structural aspect Jewishness, avant-garde, sociology and socialism have been distinguished. The second study is Genealogy where the genres of intellectual prose by Krzywicka like interviews, literary and theatre reviews, feature articles and court reports have been analysed and interpreted. After Genealogy there is Ideology, that is the chapter devoted to “what” Krzywicka managed to say about the contemporary literature and morals. The subject of the last chapter, Archeology, is the interwar reception of Krzywicka’s views expressed in newspaper articles. The ‘braces’ of A Conscious Life are constituted by Introduction (the presentation of the research state on publicism by Krzywicka and the aim of the author’s book – showing the continuity of the Polish feminist movement) and Conclusion. The last part of it is the catalogue of the interwar newspaper articles by Krzywicka. Translated by Joanna Witkowska

Theatre criticism deposits an important part of the memory of theatre, compacting the rhythm of the life of theatre. It represents a genuine collection of opinions/critical comments on acting, directing views, repertoires, set designs, costumes, and it manages to create an image of the world of theatre. It helps us become timeless viewers of still images portraying the profile of Romanian theatre in the second half of the 19th century. A mirror of its time, the theatre review allows us to understand the practices, opinions and values of that time, and to analyse the extent to which they might be functional nowadays.

Writing in The Freewoman in 1912, Rebecca West--herself a supporter of women's suffrage--denounced with characteristic acerbity increasing popularity of degradations of drama written by propagandists, complaining that the public taste has already been so perverted that Suffrage speeches... stand chance of wide popularity. (1) Despite her dismissive tone, West's description of suffrage plays as dislocated Suffrage speeches is worth taking seriously, and it is this generic overlap between political oratory and theatre that is subject of this paper. Many plays written in support of British women's suffrage movement capitalize on similarities between stage and public speaking platform to encourage women to raise their voices in a public forum. While suffrage movement inspired a variety of theatrical activities in Britain, ranging from processions and public demonstrations to dramatic works performed in mainstream West End theatres, plays that concern me here are dramatic works written in overt support of women's suffrage and performed by activist theatre groups such as Actresses' Franchise League and Pioneer Players. Many of these dramatic works break down distinction between play and suffrage speech, creating a distinctive form of political drama. In staging women's struggle to find a public voice, these plays demonstrate importance of audience in successful public expression of a feminist point of view, in keeping with recent feminist theories of voice that have stressed role of listener in feminist writing. The propagandist plays I examine here invoke two very different audiences, both of which play a role in encouraging feminist protagonists to speak publicly: on one hand, an oppositional audience, often hostile or condescending, provokes feminist speaker to engage in debate; on other, a more sympathetic audience encourages speaker to keep going and to see her quest as worthwhile. While supportive audiences tend to be presented in an idealized or fantastic manner, their convergence with actual audience at these suffrage-era productions encourages political action by breaking down distinction between stage and public challenging actual audience members to join suffrage cause and to act on what they hear. The generic convergence of suffrage oratory and drama is enabled by suffrage playwrights' and performers' unapologetic use of theatre for propagandist purposes. Feminist critics interested in British suffrage drama have long recognized and defended propagandistic aspects of these plays, though in so doing they have tended to focus more on plays' female roles and political content than on genre and staging. Suffrage plays, though well received by suffrage supporters, were often dismissed by theatre reviewers as propaganda rather than art, as Katharine Cockin has noted. (2) Suffrage playwrights and performers, however, defended their use of theatre for propaganda purposes. Edith Craig, founder and director of feminist theatre group Pioneer Players, for example, openly admitted in an interview that our plays take place of tracts, (3) while Cicely Hamilton announced proudly in The Vote that suffragists had started a new system of propaganda by means of plays, that was so successful that everybody was trying to steal plays or imitate them in some way (4) Expanding on Ellen Ecker Dolgin's observation that in suffrage drama there exists a dialogic and yet dichotomous relationship between stage and public platform, I argue that suffrage playwrights deliberately exploited connection between drama and political tract or speech to create a new, hybrid genre to authorize their political message. (5) Several critics have noted this connection, but its generic implications have not been fully explored. Carolyn Tilghman and Claire Hirshfield have both recognized these plays as new forms of protest drama that use stage as a public but they also emphasize authors' appropriation of conventional genres and formulae such as melodrama or fallen woman play. …

As Dympna Callaghan has argued, was white (Callaghan 75-96). That is, he was originally created for, and performed by, the white Renaissance actor Richard Burbage. Despite the modern production history to the contrary--with its long line of famous black actors performing the eponymous role--the part and the play were not written for black or even dark skinned actors. Instead, Othello was white man in blackface makeup. In turn, Elise Marks has posited that black actors who play Othello have been received more coolly by film and theatre reviewers than white actors because only non-African knows how to be the perfect African, at least for the emotional of thrill-seeking white audience. A black actor ... has too much independent selfhood getting in the way (Marks 117). Although Marks does specify how this fantasy-use performance of blackness ought to be staged in practical terms, several other scholars and practitioners have advocated for return to blackface productions of Othello. Despite the fact that these scholars and practitioners disagree on theoretical grounds, they nonetheless come to similar practical conclusions: that Othello should not be performed by black actor and, thus, blackface must be viable performance option if productions of Othello are to continue. I list four examples at length because it is important to analyze how these scholars and practitioners grapple with the factors that impact the semiotic significances of blackface performances of Shakespeare. For example, in 1997, Sheila Rose Bland, freelance actor and director, argued that modern performance of a: blackfaced Othello would be seen by the audience, both black and white, as other--an outsider--a caricature. This would alienate and cause discomfort to the audience. By casting real blacks to play Othello ... Shakespeare's original intent in writing Othello may well have been cloaked.... To see an actual black man kissing an actual white woman on stage is powerful image--but one that misrepresents an even more powerful image on stage intended by Shakespeare: to see white man in blackface kiss white man in woman's clothing. (Bland 31 & 38) The following year, Hugh Quarshie, the celebrated black British actor, made similar argument when addressing the University of Alabama Hudson Strode Theatre. Quarshie declared: if black actor plays Othello does he not risk making racial stereotypes seem legitimate and even true? When black actor plays role written for white actor in black make-up and for predominantly white audience, does he not encourage the white way, or rather the wrong way, of looking at black men.... Of all parts in the canon, perhaps Othello is the one which should most definitely not be played by black actor. (Quarshie 5) Likewise, Hugh Macrae Richmond has argued that a more accurate title for the play would be Iago, acknowledging that, because of [the audience's] superior knowledge of [Iago's schemes], we can never identify fully with Othello's overtly mistaken point of view (Richmond 94-95). Because of this interpretation, Richmond questions the modern tradition of casting black actors to play Othello. The irony is that such casting invites non-aesthetic identification with the actors as truly representatives of the historical victims of just such condescension, which is potentially at odds with the author's more objective intent, to display the tragic fact that racism may distort its victims' own behavior.... [W]e might identify less with the emotional extravagance of Othello if we know he is not acted by someone of actual African descent. (Richmond 96) More recently, Virginia Mason Vaughan has argued that a major ingredient in the audience's fascination with the Moor is the pleasure of the white actor personate black man and knowing that this is what he or she is seeing (Vaughan 97). …