Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

Everyone’s a Critic!, Part 2

I suspect there are critics who write half their reviews before they see the shows in question. I'm not like that. If I've read the script or heard the musical on CD, I probably have a preconceived opinion of the text, but I've been argued out of that by productions before. I do keep an open mind. Also, if ninety percent of Americans love the musical Annie, for one recent example, and I don't even like it for reasons that have nothing to do with current productions, I judge the show by how well it pleases those who love its source material. In the case of Capital Playhouse's production of Annie, they earned a sardonic thumbs-up by putting smiles on patrons' faces. I have personal issues with a member of that company, by the way, which goes to prove backstage personalities don't enter into my assessments.

So let's say I walk into the theater and have no idea what I'm about to see. I probably recognize some of the actors in the cast; many I know socially. That can be a problem. Someday, and thank the Maker I haven't had to do much of it yet, I'll be obliged to bash the work of a friend. I'm dreading the first outright stinkeroo. (The only dud in my critical career thus far was a college show in which I didn't know a single person, and even that pan had repercussions.) When I judge the script, I'm looking at a wide variety of considerations, the foremost being: Does it provoke a physical response? It's the same criterion I put first when I look for material to direct. Specifically, do the jokes make me laugh--not think, "Oh, that's witty," but actually laugh? Do the dramatic scenes boost my heart rate? Do the tragic scenes make my cry? I'm an easy laugh and an easy cry, so if those don't work the show has a real problem. As for musicals, if there's only one memorable song in the show, that's not good enough. Count the great songs in The Little Mermaid or Chess or Avenue Q or your average jukebox musical. They're your competition.

Generally speaking, a show that produces a physical response other than revulsion will be a financial and popular success. However, I won't give a positive review just because an audience liked it. People tend to go to local theatre to watch their friends and family perform, so they're already in the bag. Conversely, there were walkouts from Harlequin Productions' Six Hotels, but that didn't make it a bad show. Sometimes audience members are wrong.

I've said it before, but I also like a show that makes me think. End Days took big cosmic themes and made me consider them in a new way. The playwright, Deborah Zoe Laufer, respected my intelligence enough to make me use it. You may not care that much about the intellectual complexity of a show. That's your call, of course, but you may want to remember our difference of approach when you read my reviews. I won't get behind a show just because it appealed to me aesthetically or politically, though I do note those points in its favor.

With regard to choice of material, ask yourself this: Who's the audience? If you direct one of the old warhorses, Our Town for example, are you appealing to the nostalgia of a generation that doesn't even exist anymore? Those people are dead. Before a contemporary audience can make any sense of Dial M for Murder, you have to explain what "dial M" means, and quite possibly what "dial" means. Even the plot of a movie like Die Hard makes no sense in the era of cell phones, and much of the world's population grew up after the advent of cell phone technology. The folks who have a sentimental attachment to shows up through about 1970 are not the future of theatre. I realize they're the patron base of a lot of theaters, but catering to them makes sense only in the short term. Lots of talented people are still writing plays: Yasmina Reza, Rebecca Gilman, John Patrick Shanley, Martin McDonagh. Read new material. The stuff you liked back in college, even the material that drew you into theatre in the first place, was written for that time and that audience. It probably hasn't aged as well as you have.

If you're still married to a revival of twentieth-century drama, at least give us something in the program to explain what it means to audience members who grew up long after it was current.

If you're reviving material written prior to 1900, such as Shakespeare or Rostand, we can probably assume it's still popular because there's something universal about it. Directors: Do not automatically assume you have to translate the Bard into some other time and space. Shakespeare was not a historian. Ancient Rome didn't have tolling clocks, Illyria doesn't resemble the country in Twelfth Night, and ninth-century Danish Prince Amleth (i.e., Hamlet) probably never existed. Shakespeare created his own playgrounds, so moving those stories is like transporting The Hobbit to New Hampshire--what's the point? If the argument in favor of the move is simply, "It'd make costuming cheaper," well, that's not good enough. Changes to the text should amplify it rather than stand in its way. If you really want to set a drama with pretty language in Las Vegas, Nevada, then write one. Don't twist and mutilate Titus Andronicus in hopes of making it fit.

If you're still desperate to try your hand at the creative exercise of moving a text (and I admit, it can be a ball if done perfectly), does it have to be Shakespeare or Greek? Use your imagination. What about Volpone in the Mafia? The Odd Couple in a lunar module? Brigadoon in a Sid & Marty Krofft style puppet orgy? Okay, so there are three just off the top of my head. They're probably terrible ideas, but they're all more illuminating than setting Richard II in Tacoma (sorry, Shakespeare in the Parking Lot).

Enough about the text. You've chosen your playground; now lie in it. Study it thoroughly. Know where all the beats are. Know which plot developments are surprises and think about how to make them "land," meaning how to use them to create that physical response you're seeking. Live entertainment is about physical response. It's also about cheering the heroes and booing the villains. Recently a director whose work I've admired in the past told me he or she doesn't care all that much about the characters in his/her shows. I was flabbergasted. If he/she doesn't care, why should I? The director said he/she just wants to be entertained. By what, mugging and melody? Not every show needs to be as emotionally gripping as The Beauty Queen of Leenane, but it sure doesn't hurt. There's so much amazing live and recorded entertainment available that it's wasteful to pass up every possible method of connecting with an audience. Perhaps that's my biggest objection to camp; to call it one-note would be generous.

Now we come to the preshow experience. So many theaters squander the impact of imaginative lobby and program designs. Why waste that opportunity? Spray a fragrance that'll ease your patrons into the world of the show. Choose music that conveys a mood or thematic idea. (By the way, Prodigal Sun, that doesn't necessarily mean playing seventeen songs in a row with the word "Crazy" in the title. We get it.) I read the entire program, starting with the Director's Note. I want to know what you think your show is about, and I'll watch to see how well you convey that idea. I watch how you reveal the set. Is it visible upon entering the theater, or do you save it as a surprise? Do I feel comfortable in the theater? If not, did you decide to disorient me somehow in order to amplify location or theme? Bertolt Brecht, for example, would rather audience members were thinking than relaxing.

Ah, the dreaded curtain speech. Man, I hate them. I'll just tell you that up front. You've done all this work to seduce me into the world of the show, then you yank off the Elizabethan music and try to panhandle me in contemporary clothing. I know theaters need money, but couldn't you devise a more creative way of asking for it? One of my favorite things about Harlequin is the way its directors often integrate curtain speeches into the environment of the show. In Mating Dance of the Werewolf, the announcements were made over the PA system in the style of police radio. Is there some reason your curtain speech couldn't be rephrased in, say, iambic pentameter? Could it be sung? Included in onstage graffiti? I'm just spitballing here, but if you haven't noticed by now, two of the chief things I look for in a show are a.) focused creativity, and b.) consistency of setting and tone. Y'know how some movies put the opening studio titles in a graphic style that resonates with the rest of the film? I'm a sucker for that. Open the show in a way that lures me in, and you stand a really great chance of keeping me on your side.

To repeat, this time with regard to the body of the show:

Focused creativity. Do your choices amplify or detract from the show? Imaginative staging can turn lunch money into spectacle. Is every scene played "on the nose," or has it occurred to you that some characters might be lying? Is the lighting purely literal? How about the music? Were the only surprises in the show written by the playwright, or did you come up with ways to keep us mentally engaged in quiet moments?

Consistency of setting and tone. Do all the characters look and act like they belong in the same play? Is the acting or performance style reasonably consistent from actor to actor? (It'd be weird, for example, if only one member of a Molière cast rapped.) Do you understand the world of the play? Do all the details make sense? Props are a dead giveaway. Next time you attend a production of Macbeth, watch the banquet scene; table forks weren't used in Scotland until five hundred years after the time of the play. Do the characters seem comfortable in their costumes, and are those costumes accurate? Cleopatra VII seldom wore Egyptian clothing; she preferred Hellenic Greek togas for all but ceremonial occasions. Does each background character have a plausible function in his or her fictional world?

With regard to acting, I'm a Meisner guy (I'm referring to the largely reactive technique popularized by director and acting teacher Sanford Meisner), so I'd rather watch actors interact with each other than perform for the audience. "Cool" and "fabulousness" bore me. Mugging flat-out annoys me. Does each actor understand what he or she is saying? Is he or she racing through Elizabethan meter in some horrendously misguided attempt to shorten a Shakespeare play by making it incomprehensible? Is he or she droning Sophoclean dialogue because some academic scholar said that's the way Oedipus Tyrranus was performed twenty-five hundred years ago? (It probably wasn't, by the way.) Is the villain inexplicably melodramatic? (No one actually "bwahaha"s from sheer evil. I've lived over forty years and I've never seen it happen, and neither have you. There is such a thing as reality, even in a thriller.) Do the lovers have sexual and romantic chemistry?

...which leads me to a delicate topic. One might even describe it as a third rail (ask Ramin Setoodeh), but I'll broach it anyway. I know it's the height of political incorrectness to say it out loud, but some actors are too...let's say flamboyant for certain roles. I once saw a production of Damn Yankees, ostensibly about a professional baseball team, that looked more like La Cage aux Folles. I'm a longstanding advocate of gender-, color-, and orientation-blind casting under any number of circumstances (my MFA thesis show starred a black Galileo). I agree wholeheartedly that many gay actors can "play hetero," and I've cast several accordingly. Some gay actors can't. Enough said.

A professional theatre critic ought be the second critic to see the show, not the first, and he or she is much less important to its success or failure than the actual first: the director. I believe it's part of a director's job to dissect his or her own show and find every last one of its flaws, then correct them before anyone else gets a chance to see them.

It's often said wise audience members wait till the last week of a show to see it, and I've heard it's a shame theatre critics can't do the same. Well, hooey. Every show should be a hundred percent ready on opening night. That audience pays the same ticket price as any later audience. The problem with that old saw about "theatre magic" salvaging a show from chaos at the last possible second is that it works, but only so well. Yes, actors' desperation to avoid public humiliation can slap leaky patches on a broken show, but imagine how much better it would've been if the play were sufficiently rehearsed. Focused acting cannot fix incompetent directing, and it's not the actors' job to even try.

Some other elements I enjoy in a show:

Guts, by which I mean courage--but then, a few steaming piles of viscera never hurt a good Jacobean slaughterfest either. Onstage nudity is incredibly brave, of course, but so is looking old and/or unattractive. In my case as an actor, it actually takes more courage for me to dance than to take my clothes off. Thankfully, the outcry for me to do either has been less than deafening.

Poetry, delivered clearly and beautifully.

Perfectly coordinated platoons of chorus dancers.

Water effects--the refraction off a "swimming pool" surface, the skillful employment of spinning cylindrical gobos to simulate rainfall, the Tempest.

Credible child actors.

Choreographed swordfights and derring-do generally.

Actors who "cover" technical mishaps without missing a beat.

Sexy classics. It's incredibly difficult to make Shakespeare sexy, for example, but Kenneth Branagh managed with Much Ado About Nothing. Highest marks.

Range. I cannot emphasize this enough. Oly loves to stereotype its actors, and I understand why. It's easier and safer. But nothing makes me love an actor more than a brand-new, believable character. (What a treat, for example, to watch Tom Sanders as a crusty old commander, or Bruce Jay Fogg as a nimble monkey.) If, on the other hand, I get "sassy!" from certain actors one more time I'm going to weep openly.

Stage kissing that looks like actual kissing. In a Meisner show, it is actual kissing.

Urgency. Something in the story has to matter to its characters--now.

Vulnerability. No human being is bulletproof, physically or emotionally.

What Brecht called "character gestus," physical choices that reveal personality, motivation, and background.

Variations in tempo, adroitly orchestrated to heighten tension and impact.

Originality.

Wit.

The perfection of artful moments.

Creative spectacle.

And above all: Passion. Passion. Passion. Without that, there's almost always something better on TV.

To be concluded tomorrow...

Everyone’s a Critic!, Part 1

"I have always been very fond of [theatre critics]....I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it."--Noel Coward

I read a lot of criticism, not (just) because I delight in the humiliation of wannabe artists. I love art, entertainment, and Western pop culture, but I only have so much free time and income to spend on it. Should I see Robin Hood or How to Train Your Dragon? Roger Ebert and Colin Boyd to the rescue! (Respectively no and yes, by the way.) When I'm between books, a recommendation from Jennifer Reese (formerly of Entertainment Weekly) is worth its weight in Amazon orders. You likely have favorite book and movie critics as well, but when it comes to theatre, critics probably don't matter as much if at all. For one thing, there aren't enough qualified critics to go around; people who know a lot about theatre tend to be too busy creating it to write about it. Besides, theatre is a close-knit community in most places, which turns any unadoring critique into a sociopolitical minefield.

I used to live in a town where the only theatre "critic" was in fact the president of the community theatre troupe writing under a pen name. I'm sure it was pure coincidence that he reserved his most fulsome accolades for shows he directed. I live in South Puget Sound now, an area blessed with a surplus of skilled, knowledgeable theatre folk. On almost any weekend year-round, the good people of Olympia and Tacoma have their pick of shows to attend, of any conceivable genre. Even confining my efforts to Olympia, I see and review an average of a play a week; it'd be more if I attended high school shows. I'm told there are high schools in Oly that put on musicals comparable to solid semiprofessional efforts.

If we didn't have so much good live entertainment, then, I could understand why people might insist my fellow critics and I should write only positive responses to local theatre--but no, that ain't my job, Gentle Reader. If you want an advertisement for your show, the Weekly Volcano would be thrilled to sell you one. But you're in fierce competition with other theatre companies, the movies, TV, and one of the best live music environments in the country. If you make bad art, I'm the last line of defense between your half-baked hootenanny and a customer's hard-earned cash. I'm obliged to recommend some shows over others.

I've been accused of condescension. I take that charge seriously, and I know my nonfiction writing style can come across as a bit highfalutin. Well, I'm a snob, friends. Take it or leave it. I'm proudly snobbish. It makes me feel smart and sophisticated to know good art from bad art. I don't buy the argument that only cruel, unhappy people bother to differentiate between the two. I enjoy all kinds of entertainment, from opera to L.A. punk, post-impressionism to superhero comics, 42nd Street to Velvet Hammer Burlesque, Hermann Hesse to Howard Hesseman. I groove on Lady Gaga and the London Symphony Orchestra. My favorite movie is The Empire Strikes Back, but I also loved all of Trois Couleurs. I live for throwaway culture, but even "junk" has levels of quality. Why watch Web Soup, for example, when Tosh.0 is demonstrably funnier? I have diverse tastes, very few of which could be described as elitist, but that's not the main reason I reject charges of condescension or pretentiousness.

"Condescension," according to the dictionary, is the assumption of "an air of authority." The "air" part is assumed to be the rub. "Pretentious," of course, means "making or possessing usu[ally] unjustified claims." Well, I don't "claim" to be an authority, nor have I put on an "air" of authority--I am an authority. I apologize for immodesty, but facts are facts. I have a terminal degree in theatre direction, and while that may be synonymous with "underemployed adjunct faculty," it's at least a certification of authority on the limited topic of theatre. "I've paid my dues, time after time, " and I do know my stuff. I don't doubt for a second there are people in Oly who are every bit as qualified as I to direct a show, but if they don't live up to their potential as artists, I will notice. Moreover, I know there are people in Oly who have directed more shows than I have; but if they directed those shows incorrectly, then I don't care.

In other words, as I explained in reply to a miffed comment on WeeklyVolcano.com, my expertise in theatre isn't a character flaw. It's my qualification for the job. If I knew less about theatre, would a compliment from me really matter? Likewise, if I say something negative about your show, you won't refute my point by attacking my personality or how "mean" I must've been to notice your artistic missteps.

Having said that, I must add I get no pleasure from knocking other people's work. This surprises even me. I admit I get a charge out of brutal criticism when I don't know personally any of the parties involved. Dorothy Parker, for example: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." Or the incomparable Ambrose Bierce: "The covers of this book are too far apart." Oh, snap! But it's one thing to lob spitballs at Stephenie Meyer; like Liberace, she can cry all the way to the bank. It's quite another to point out that an unpaid local performer who's really trying can't act. That actor has feelings, and it upsets me to think I might someday be obliged to crush them. There's an actor in Oly, for example, a fixture in show after show, whose work always reminds me of a nasty review in Hamlet: "O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly,...that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably." He or she never convincingly portrays a human being, merely a campy, cartoonish exaggeration. I know the actor in question adores theatre and makes a serious effort to learn, but improvements are marginal at best. Should I give him or her an E for effort? I'd love to; the actor is someone whose company I enjoy socially. I just can't. I'd be lying, and the Volcano pays me to tell the truth.

Well...some of the truth. It's certainly fair, even expected, to downplay the faults of a show in favor of its strengths--but even that can be insulting. Looking back over my years as an actor, I think the reviews I hated most were those that failed to mention me at all. (I soothed my wounded ego by deciding I must have played the character so well the critic assumed I was merely playing myself. Yeah...that's the ticket.) There are qualities a show can possess that'll inspire me to give it a pass for most other shortcomings. I have my personal tastes, same as anyone else. If a show engages my mind, for example, that matters at least as much to me as when a musical sets my feet a-tap-tap-tappin'. After all, the latter is a biological response to percussion and rhythm; it takes very little effort or acumen to prompt that response. For most artists, cleverness is harder than cadence. I try to look beyond my preferences; my admitted disinterest in camp aside, for example, I can usually tell and acknowledge the difference between good camp and bad camp. (Some would say "between bad camp and worse camp.") But whatever my personal preferences, sloppy workmanship is sloppy workmanship. If you callously insist on conning audience members into coughing up dollars on an ill-rehearsed production, I feel guiltless warning other audience members away.

Some scripts are better than others, and that's a factor in any review. No direction or performance is skilled enough to save lousy writing. Granted, they can serve as distractions, but if a director's show has an unfunny or dated script, it's not my fault for noticing and saying so, it's his or her fault for choosing it. I try to draw clear distinctions between what the playwright wrote and what each specific company made of it. Reviews must include both aspects of a show to help potential audience members decide whether they might wish to attend.

Look, I'm just one guy with one opinion, and I get that, and we'll accept as a given that I can't completely overrule my own tastes in favor of yours. Caveat lector: Let the reader beware. It's fair to say you have a right to your own opinions about theatre, and it's fair to say a show you enjoy is a show you enjoy no matter what I might think of it. I'm not the keeper of all theatre knowledge.

People in community theatre usually didn't sign up to be dressed down in public, but I believe we've had theatre critics long enough that even amateur actors should be aware of the risk of professional evaluation. I do go easier on actors in inexpensive community theatre than in professional theatre because I expect more from the latter than the former. Community theatre is Amateur Night and probably should be, even if more experienced actors sometimes sneak in and mess with the curve. It's only when troupes claim professional skill levels and/or charge upwards of twenty bucks a ticket that I get more demanding.

One final caveat: Whatever you may think of me or my reviews, the simple fact is I want to like your show. That's true even if I can't stand you personally. For one thing, I probably have friends in it, and I'd rather say nice things about them than mean things about you. Also, I'm too passive aggressive to get much kick out of open confrontation. And third, even if you're a misanthropic prick who trashes me in public and accuses me of stupid bigotries I've repudiated for decades and by the way, that other thing you did was a juvenile half-joke of a self-congratulatory gas cloud, I still have to sit through your next show. Depending on the circumstances, I might even have to pay to see it. Then I have to stay for both acts, even if every neuron in my brain begs me to run for the door at intermission. So whatever the show, no matter who put it together--and this is true without a single exception--I walk in hoping it knocks the ball out of the park. I can still loathe you privately for your obvious character defects, plus that time you power-dissed my girlfriend for no discernible reason, even though she's obviously a dozen times smarter and saner than you'll ever be, not to mention better-looking.

Of course, by "you" I don't mean YOU, Gentle Reader. You and I are golden. I have nothing but good things to say about YOU. It's that other little a-hole. You know the one.

Coming in Part 2: How to shake a glowing review out of that curmudgeonly hack who scribbles for the Weekly Volcano, in just a thousand little steps. It's both easier and harder than it sounds.

Then, to conclude in Part 3: Why do I even bother? Who reads theatre reviews, anyway? Should you? If my review says a show is bad but you think it sounds like fun, should you go see it anyway? Okay, but what if your cousin is in it? And now that local companies are announcing their 2010-2011 seasons, which upcoming shows look most promising?

Until next time, break a leg, and don't forget: We critics have feelings, too, buried somewhere down deep in our hate-blackened husks of human souls.