Body politic

New article by me on the Guardian's blog here.

Reviews of Rhinoceros and Macbeth in progress.

Lit candles and everything

Sorry it’s been a while. The computers at work have been on the fritz all week with the result that shifts have been rather longer than they’re meant to be, leaving me a bit on the tired side. And since (the utterly, utterly lovely) Natasha Tripney described Postcards as “passionate, humorous and intelligent” in her Guardian blog, I’ve been feeling a bit like I’ve got something to live up to - which is hard to do when news-soaked and sleep-deprived.

Also, what with the Northern Rock farrago taking up every last inch of newsprint and with the blogsophere mostly split between further dissections of A Disappointing Number and the rolling discussion about blogging versus reviewing - both of which I’ve already had a say about - it seemed like as good a time as any to be overtired and under-productive.

WLTM

That said, I did come across what is possibly my favourite ever personals ad in TheLondonPaper on Thursday. No, I’m not looking. But, as literary forms go, the personal ad is hugely underrated - little haiku-like mini-windows onto rolling vistas of desire and despair and all in 160 characters (unless it’s the LRB personals, which are in an altogether different league). What more could a bus journey need? Certainly I’d rather read a page of personal ads than yet another account of a hapless pop moppette having a few too many in one nasty nitespot or other. The ad reads as follows:

“Exotic Asian princess, late 30s, fashionable, vivacious, kind, seeks tall, slim, dark hair/eyes, single, quiet, Catholic man, 38-45, for...”

For a Graham Greene novel, surely?

Actually, what she’s after is “friendship” - if any of you dear readers do happen to fulfil her stringent requirements and want such a chum, her number is 0904 245 0200 with the voicebox 08569. Just don’t come complaining when it turns out that she has been working for the communists all along, and became a nun once she realised that she had fallen in love with you - the man she had been sent to betray.

Nanny State Gone Mad!

Elsewhere in the papers this week, aside from the endless soul-searching over the “first run on an English bank in 148 years,” the police seemed to be getting a good kicking. Mostly over the rather depressing tale of how two community special constable types were instructed by their superiors not to dive into a lake to save two drowning boys because they had not had the necessary training. Having scented blood and established a theme, however, the press do like to expand a one-off into a trend. So it wasn’t especially surprising to see a story about Greater Manchester Police being banned from using bicycles surface in a few papers this morning being paraded as a further example of health and safety regulations Gone Mad ( - a prize of some conkers to the first person to spot a “conkers banned in school” story this year, btw).

That said, the last we heard from the police was their clamour for more firepower. It’s come to something when anyone thinks that a bike is more dangerous than a gun.

Celebrity Love Lost

While we’re here, I should also put in a quick plug for the discussion that I’m producing and appearing in at the Finborough Theatre tonight. It is on the subject of “celebrity casting” in theatre. It starts at half seven. If you happen to read this in time, do come along if you’re not busy. No doubt a more detailed post on the subject will appear tomorrow.

Readin’

Aside from some lovely new stuff from the usual suspects in the blogosphere (names listed to your right), a couple of arts pieces did catch my attention over the weekend:

In a recent Financial Times, Clement Crisp’s review of Tango Fire is worth a read if you’re interested in critical writing. I hardly ever remember to read dance reviews properly - partially because the prose style of the ones I’m more usually exposed to isn’t really my bag - but this struck me as fascinating. Obviously I’ve no idea how likely he is to be right, or even whether its accurate - but it's great to read engagement with a largely separate artform being conducted in a different idiom. It makes me keen to read up on the debates that surround dance criticism, and see if they compare, or if there are lessons to be learned.

Also on the subject of critical pursuits, Mark Kermode’s piece for the Observer about his battle to overcome his film-centric ignorance of television is something to which I intend to return when I have time to read it properly - interesting to note, in passing, that he refers to the recent Nick Hytner/theatre critics rumpus. Obviously even those without a vested interest were taking notes.

And finally, anyone with a taste for the sublime and ridiculous should immediately read this remarkable interview with 17-year-old actor Nicholas Hoult off of Skins talking with great enthusiasm and frankness about his obsession with Nando’s:

"I do romantic meals with my girlfriend. Lit candles and everything. But I take her to Nando's too. She knows that I'm obsessed with it, and she's pretty understanding about going there for dinner."

Thoughts: in three parts*

Cooke: Court still says ‘Cunt’

Ahead of tomorrow’s press night for the first play in the Royal Court’s exciting new season of international plays, The Ugly One, Dominic Cooke offered a series of ineffably sane and reasonable comments on his plans for the Royal Court in yesterday’s Observer (under a somewhat excitable sub’s headline).

As I’ve commented many times before, Dominic Cooke has done unbelievable good for the theatre since he took over as artistic director. His programming has been consistently intelligent and interesting. Also, not noted in this article, but far more important in many ways - although less headline-grabbing - he has already demonstrated that he is open to looking at new models of making work for theatre. The two week Rough Cuts mini-season this July was perhaps the real coup of his directorship so far. It is fantastic news that the artistic director of perhaps the leading new writing theatre in London is prepared to look beyond the literary model of play-making. In the meantime, it is surely worthy of note that he has programmed an entire season of work by non-English-speaking writers.

Katie Mitchell / Complicité

Secondly, I’d like to address a couple of the comments that have arisen from my comparisons between Complicité’s A Disappearing Number (henceforth ADN) and Katie Mitchell’s last two plays at the National.

Anonymous says: “I'm intrigued that you like Katie Mitchell's recent work so much when much of what you write [in your review of ADN] could most certainly be applied to, for example, her Attempts on Her Life or Waves.”

I really don’t think the same can be applied. I’ll try to explain why.
The primary difference between the NT stuff and ADN for me is that in the former virtually everything that you saw and heard was being created on stage. The creation of the cinematic projected images was a direct result of live human behaviour that you could watch taking place, both in the sound effects and video trickery of Waves and the vast screen projections of Attempts on Her Life. This struck me as an intensely theatrical approach to using multi-media because it foregrounded its creation and use - much like when Fecund had their sound and lighting desk on stage in Intimate Male back in 2001 (there are no doubt countless other examples). It seemed to take multi-media use to a whole new level. It wasn’t *between* the actor and the audience; it was something that the actor was doing right in front of the audience. Beyond this, I particularly liked the aesthetic employed. That the actors were also ‘performing’ their use of the technology - the running around and faux ramshackleness was all meticulously choreographed - added a further fascinating dimension.

I should make it clear that I don’t have an objection to video-projections at all. I quite liked the way they were deployed in The Elephant Vanishes, for example. But I think there needs to be an acknowledgement of what they are, how they operate and what they do to a piece of theatre. For example, in an earlier Fecund piece - their production of The Cherry Orchard - there was a scene in which the characters acted in front of a vast projection of a dance while thumping, deafening techno music played over the speakers. The only character whose speech could be heard was screaming into a microphone. This fitted perfectly with the overall aesthetic of the piece. It also seemed entirely appropriate, since it acknowledged the way that the music and projection was steamrollering the human scale. In ADN, similar steamrollering (or at least wallpapering) felt to me like it was taking place while the actors pretended it wasn’t.

Further on ‘Davis Wateracre’ (who I know, in case you’re wondering), asks: “Don't you weaken your argument by saying rather snottily that they are ‘review-proof’ and then attempting to take them down a peg? I completely understand the urge, and similarly I completely understand that this production left you cold, but should we as reviewers start from a clean slate every time?”

I would draw a distinction between what I wrote on ADN and a ‘review’ proper. I didn’t see the show on a press ticket, and had sent someone else to review it for CultureWars - partially for exactly the reasons I raise in my piece about the show. As such, I felt completely free from the constraints of reviewing/criticism proper; the piece is partially more essay than review so I felt freer to engage with the aspects of it which I found problematic and to foreground the subjectivity of those problems. Which leads me rather neatly on to...

Billington blogs on blogs
(or, The Wolf just gets crazier)

Michael Billington has written a new post in the Guardian’s theatre blog section in which (ironically) he comments on theatre blogs. He asks: “Is blogging changing theatre criticism?” And argues that it undoubtedly is. If it is, it is hard to see quite how it is changing it. Newspaper reviews today look pretty much like they did a couple of years ago before theatre blogging gained any sort of momentum.

I pretty much fall between the two (perhaps illusory) camps which he sets up - professional critics and bloggers - since I both review plays (sometimes even for money, thus “professional”) and write (keep? what is the verb?) a blog. I try to keep the two things faintly separate. If I am reviewing a play on a press ticket I will write a “proper review” for the publication under whose auspices I have been given the ticket. If I am seeing something that I’ve paid for - or am on a press ticket for the blog like I was at the Hampstead last week - then I feel freer to write what I like. Mostly on the blog I write about issues around theatre (and around reviewing it). This is obviously different to the West End Whingers site, which is almost solely a reviews website. And one which makes an absolute virtue of the independence that paying for tickets brings. While Chris Goode and Andrew Field offer a mixture of reviews and comment.

Beyond his disobliging suggestion that “the blog, in its voracious desire for news and opinion, is in danger of too much pre-emptive guesswork,” (which appears to be more a criticism of the Guardian’s own theatre blogs than those outwith - since the example given is precisely one such piece) Billington’s main point is interestingly conflicted. His central point is “I still cherish the idea of the printed review”. He makes a number of fine claims for the art of the critic. At the same time he acknowledges the many frustrations that his art endures - “The restrictions of space and time are considerable, but they force one to focus on essentials.” One can’t help wondering, despite the admirable insistence on structure (and lord knows, Postcards... could sometimes do with a bit of structuring, restricted time and space) whether he wouldn't relish just a bit less restriction.

Writing this blog, I am often reminded of that Balzac (I think) quote, which - paraphrased - says: “I would have written less, I didn’t have time.” That said, one obvious advantage with blogs and online review sites is precisely that one isn’t pressed to restrict one’s word count. Yes, discipline can be a useful, uh, discipline - but by the same token, it is lovely to read something that takes all the time it likes to go into real detail and is afforded the space to discuss the wider implications of the work. It is also great that there is now online a growing corpus of work which is discussing issues at the cutting edge of theatre-making and discussing theatre criticism in real depth. A national newspaper could never be expected to publish all that. It is not its job. I’m interested in reading it, but I’m realistic enough to know that most people aren’t.

Another benefit of the online review and blog is that it offers the opportunity for writers to experiment. I think Michael is quite right to suggest that there is a critical discipline and an acknowledged way to write reviews, but it is exciting to read people who are writing outside that box. Quite apart from anything else, being online allows reviews to hyperlink, putting the rest of the net at their disposal. I would argue that not all blogs are like informal letters - some are certainly possessed of great elegance and eloquence. Conversely, a lot of online reviews actual follow the general pattern much more than one might imagine they would.

A further bonus for online reviewers is the simple lack of duty - they are also under no obligation to cover something that they really don’t want to see. Obviously there are advantages to having one or two people covering a majority of theatrical events in the country per paper, but at the same time a different advantage would be had if those people weren’t forced to see so much with barely a nod to their tastes, and with their schedules dictated largely by commercial considerations. For example, I’m sure there are nights when three or four press nights clash and the two reviewers employed by a paper will be sent to the two plays in, say, the West End and Stratford rather than the studio production with no star names or massive subsidy in which at least one of the reviewers might be far more interested. Perhaps I’m wrong, but big openings never seem to get missed, while interesting work may be, simply because of “News Values”. There’s an interesting wider question there about what makes theatre "important", but now isn’t the time or the place.

When Michael argues that, “The nature of the newspaper review is always changing, of course... reviews are increasingly seen as an instant guide for the reader: the existence of star ratings is proof of that.” One gets a real sense of his frustration. It seems a shame that he doesn’t appear to acknowledge that a lot of those writing blogs share precisely this frustration, which is why, in part, they are writing them.

And finally, Mark Ravenhill’s piece from today’s Guardian is clever and thoughtful as always. And elsewhere, it is great to see a new post from Alex Ferguson on his Unknown Persons blog.


* Title suggested by Wallace Shawn’s play A Thought in Three Parts, one of the most exciting and provocative bits of American experimental writing for the theatre that I have read.

Blogland burnout spectacular

Don’t panic; I’m close to hitting the wall in my current run of blogorrhoea. What did it for me was clicking through from a link in Lyn Gardner’s take on whether critics should have friends who are theatre makers (no, apparently), which was helpfully provided by fellow blogger Natasha Trippney of Interval Drinks.

This in turn took me to Fin Kennedy’s blog back in December and January [scroll down to the 14th] last year, which was cited by Lyn as an example of what can happen when poacher turns gamekeeper. As Fin noted in the comments section under Lyn’s original article, that’s not strictly what happened. But, It still makes for pretty depressing reading.

Not having had enough of arguments, and feeling somewhat chastened by the description of my blog as “a great resource for the London theater scene” on The Shalimar’s blog (not the intention, I know - but no one wants to feel parochial, and I really am far more guilty of it than most), I went on to have a look at the rumpus recently being waged over at George Hunka’s website concerning his committing the first cardinal sin of criticism - writing up after leaving at the interval. I was alerted to this by Australia’s Alison Croggan’s own excellent response (oh yes, I was really doing the rounds today). Actually, George's position is something of a grey area, and one which (to the best of my knowledge) does not exist in Britain - he was on a free ticket (to a preview performance) and had been invited to write-up, but as a "blogger" rather than as an "actual critic".

In his defence, Hunka can be found musing on: “useless dichotomies -- critic/playwright, amateur/professional -- which only serve to Balkanize the practice of theatre production, reporting and criticism in the United States. Preserving these dichotomies only serves to more firmly entrench the status quo in which these dichotomies encourage antagonism and separation.” This reminds me a lot of what I wrote about at no small length yesterday.

Anyway - yes: he makes a full admission that he left at the interval. No: I’m not sure that’s enough. Nor am I sure that I’m not sure. Obviously it’s terrible manners. But then so is boring someone half to sleep. Obviously a critic can’t report accurately on a play if they haven’t seen it all, and that is their job. By the same token, a blogger is probably well within their rights to leave at the interval if they really can’t face the second half. It is - as Ian Shuttleworth once remarked when someone threw a chair at my head - practical criticism in action. I’ve certainly felt no compunction about not returning for the second halves of West End shows that I wasn’t reviewing.

Hunka in turn points to theatre director Isaac Butler’s attack on US dramaturgy, which he describes as an “annual churlish slog” - this seems a little harsh given that Butler appears to have directed two of Hunka’s plays. Or perhaps “churlish” is a term of approbation in New York. That, or Butler didn’t do a very good job with the plays. Either way, in many respects Butler’s post seems to echo quite a lot of what gets said over here when writers are complaining about the culture of dramaturgy. What is heartening however, is Christopher Shinn’s comments on the matter. Specifically his praise for:
“other societies, which have much healthier new-writing structures in place -- where young playwrights are getting full and enthusiastically-received productions -- [which] have nothing even approaching "development" as we understand it in America. [...] Dominic Cooke's season since taking over the Royal Court is an example of what happens when structures exist that support the writing of plays (new writers' groups) and then productions. The intermediate step of readings and development without a commitment to production is largely lacking in the U.K. I am a product of a culture that produces, at the highest level, the untested plays of untested writers, and over there I'm one of dozens.”

As the row on Fin Kennedy’s blog, and several spats like it since across a variety of other blogs, attest, we in Britain fret and stamp around a lot worrying about our lot and about theatre here. For the most part, I try not to despair too much. Three years of being paid to read the Daily Mail and the tabloids has instilled in me an almost complete mistrust of hand-wringing and worst case scenarios. Yes, there are issues that want looking at and talking about - most obviously: the ongoing prominence of the British tradition of text-based work, the models of theatre management this can put in place, and the wider issue of what audiences want, expect, and are prepared to work at, or indeed are equipped with the intellectual reference points to deal with - but in our collective passion to improve everything, let’s not forget that we've got plenty to be pleased about too.

Critical distance

An idea that has been bothering me since returning from this year’s Fringe is the notion of “critical distance”, or rather: what is the proper/correct position of theatre critics to their subjects (be they actors, directors, writers or whoever)? As well as reviewing theatre I have a lot of friends and acquaintances, who act, write, direct and make theatre. I also work for three theatres and one company as a script reader. In short, I enjoy the company of people who share my enthusiasm for theatre. As a result, these days I end up seeing a lot of shows, particularly in Edinburgh, which are made by people I know, and reviewing them. To an extent this makes perfect sense - what attracts people to one another is, in part, some sort of kindredness of spirit and/or appreciation of one anothers’ work/talent/etc. You take an interest in someone’s show; you chat to them afterwards about it; you see each other around; it turns out you have friends in common, and before long you are at the least friendly acquaintances. On the other hand, historically critics have avoided such close integration to avoid accusations of compromise.

For fellow theatre makers this is fine. Places like Edinburgh (and similarly the NSDF) provide a crucial trade fair-like environment where liked-minded artists can meet, see each other’s work, enthuse, exchange ideas and forge vital alliances that result in brilliant new work. For critics/reviewers it is a slightly different ball game. For a start, we’re not even meant to be in the same business - we are essentially journalists, not theatre-makers. Our first duty, so the received wisdom goes, is to our readers and not to the theatre. And that’s quite right. Readers shouldn’t have to second-guess how much any given critic’s punches might have been pulled due to a misguided sense of “support” for a play.

A lot of critics (pretty much all those working for the national papers) make it a matter of policy never to stay for drinks after a show on press night. Of course this is partially a matter of practicality. If you have to file overnight then cutting into your already scant write-up time and then trying to do the job half cut is plainly idiotic. But, like the aisle seats and imaginary rush for the lobby telephone booth, this policy is starting to feel like little more than a formalised tradition. A lot of papers no longer appear to insist on overnight reviews for anything but the most prominent, starry West End openings. Yet in the main “the critics” (how I hate this formulation, implying as it does some sort of non-existent commonality) still see it as “bad form” to stay on.*
There is, of course, a more glaringly obvious reason why they avoid entanglement with their subjects, though: for the pure and simple reason that it is never pleasant having to disagree with friends, or to put it more bluntly, because they feel they need to maintain an apparently crucial critical distance.

So, what happens if a critic - let’s call him X (and assume that he’s a man, because we and society are a sexist) - becomes friends with a writer or director - Y - and then goes to see their next show? There are a number possibilities concerning X’s response. He might dislike it, and risk ruining his friendship with Y by saying as much. It takes a pretty strong stomach to say, “I really didn’t enjoy your new play at all,” to a friend, but X does it. On the other hand, because of his friendship with Y, X might limit his criticisms, and by doing so, deprive the public of an honest account of the work (I should make clear, X does not deprive the public of an “objective” account - there is no such thing - but by not recording a full and honest account, he fails to supply precisely what he has been employed to provide). There is also the third option, that because of his friendship with Y, X might have gained additional insight into the work. It is this last possibility which interests me most.

Does a friendship, or even acquaintance, between a critic and an artist, which enriches the critic’s understanding of the artist’s intentions, make the critic a useful idiot for the artist, or a better informed observer/interpreter for the public? An excellent example is the relationship between Michael Billington and Harold Pinter. Billington has written pretty much the definitive biographical study of the man’s work, and is clearly a huge fan - I think I’m right in saying that they are on pretty good terms socially, too. Does this invalidate Billington’s reviews of Pinter’s plays, or does it augment them with a greater understanding? Both are possible options. The two options may even run concurrently. Perhaps insight can only be gained at the expense of some critical distance. After all, even reading a director’s programme notes changes one’s relationship to what one is seeing. The question is: where should the critic stand in relation to experiencing the work. It soon starts to sound like “critical distance” is a deliberate space employed by a reviewer enabling them to score points and disparage. I’m not suggesting that if every critic “understood” the work of every theatre-maker then everyone would get good reviews. It is perfectly possible to understand someone’s premises and wholly disagree with them. The fact remains, it is a lot harder to say that to someone you know.

However, these friendships with theatre-makers spring up because of some sense of a common purpose, or shared take on the world. Although I might personally like some of the people making the work that I’m enjoying, quite often the reason we’re friends in the first place sprung from an enjoyment of their earlier work (much earlier in many cases - some over a decade ago). It stands to reason that I might well continue to enjoy subsequent examples of their work, irrespective of any matey-ness which may have occurred in the intervening period. At the same time, I wouldn’t shrink from writing an honest review addressing or describing problems in a show by friends that I hadn’t enjoyed. That said, it does feel strange to get emails saying thanks for a review (or indeed some very sweet and wry blog posts either giving a heads up to the review with additional personality profiling, or references to the ongoing "global stomach-turning love-in" between myself and Chris Goode). At the same time, it is really nice.

Of course Edinburgh always blurs the boundaries a bit. Performers and critics can often be found drinking in the same venue bars. And it feels like quite a healthy exercise for all parties concerned. Artists get to remember that critics are not just monsters, and critics get to remember that artists are humans too. And everyone gets to remember that even though we’re nominally on "different sides" the only reason any of us do what we do is because we’re all deeply passionate about what theatre can be - even if no one fully agrees what that is.

That said I’m still not sure that I completely buy into this "opposition" between critic and theatre-maker. Yes, a critic is a journalist with a responsibility to their readers and, in a wider analysis, to informed, entertaining writing. But, as well as being a critic I also work for the literary departments of a few theatres. Similarly, some of the sharpest critical writing about theatre these days can be found in the blogs of theatre makers. And it’s by no means all positive, touchy-feely, supportive stuff. There is no less rigorous critical engagement simply because the writer is nominally on the "same side" as his or her subject. Indeed at times it sometimes feels like there might be more so as a direct result of the theoretical parity at play.

On blogs, however, there is a far greater degree of foregrounded subjectivity. This is an interesting dilemma for the critic. On one hand we all know that - no matter how deeply held our feelings on any given play - we aren’t owners of the Objective Truth. On the other hand, I was certainly taught (by Robert Hewison, Theatre Critic of the Sunday Times) that egotism and personality-based grandstanding was to be avoided at all costs. His simple formulation: ‘Don’t say "I think". God knows it should be apparent enough to everyone that it is what you think because you’re writing it. Remember that the play is the subject of the review, not you.’

It is quite possible the critics’ observation of this rule that leads many an enraged theatre maker to conclude that theatre critics think they Know It All, when what they are striving to do is simply demonstrate that they know their own mind. Another of Robert’s tips for writing authoritatively is the avoidance of weasel words (perhaps, quite, possibly, etc.). Certainly, the removal of all such equivocations can turn a slippery piece of ho-hummery into a pretty (ooh, look, there’s one) bold assertion. Again, whilst strengthening the writing, it perhaps (ha!) introduces an unintended note of inflexibility into the work. But then, one knows what one thinks, why flannel? Either one liked the play or one didn’t, right? However, despite being less assertive and technically worse writing, in the context of the blogsophere it does somehow feel more relaxed and open.

I’m not sure that “the critical establishment” (such as it isn’t and doesn’t see itself) is in the parlous state that its critics sometimes fear, though. Look at the extra-curricular activities of Aleks Sierz and Dominic Cavendish (and co.) on TheatreVoice - surely an excellent example if ever there was one of a breakdown in the distance between critic and theatre-maker into a sympathetic, interested, robust exchange. Consider Lyn Gardner’s excellent, honest and thought-provoking blogs on the Guardian website. Or Ian Shuttleworth’s open and frank use of the comment sections of numerous theatre makers’ blogs and engagement with “the critics” at large in his Theatre Record editorials. Or Brian Logan, who as well as sometimes staying for press night drinks, is also part of a theatre company himself. Or Kieron Quirke, who also writes radio and TV comedies (and who, I believe, has just been whisked off to L.A. to have a pilot made of one by some Americans). Greater integration, less mystique, and perhaps even a bit of involvement seem to be the watchwords here. This is a terrifically hopeful model for a future “critical establishment”. Of course there still needs to be a sense of authority in the writing. An exchange of views does not mean that the critic should exchange their views for some that their interlocutor would prefer. Plays will still get bad reviews. But I am optimistic that gradually a shift is taking place, and the positioning of critic and artist is evolving for the better. After all, the point of the critic is not to “criticise” but to critique. As Ian Shuttleworth recently put it: 'the most succinct description of the critic's function that I've ever heard is Michael Coveney's: "to explain culture to itself". You do what you can: you know it'll never be the last word... but it can be, uh, word.'


* I wish London theatres would adopt the model apparently favoured in New York whereby press can attend a choice of press nights, but are vetoed from filing before a specific date, allowing a bit of time for the writer to mull over what they’ve seen. Exam conditions are never going to be the best way of getting the most thoughtful considerations of theatre works into the public arena. On the other hand, at least the rigorous schedule does keep one up to date with what’s opening. With the theatres essentially collaborating to avoid press nights clashing, critics don’t need to spend hours with a spreadsheet and list of possible press nights trying to work out how to fit everything in.

Edit: Sod it. Having linked to Theatre Record's excellent editorials page, I then realised that I hadn't been keeping up to date with reading them and, lo and behold, there's an excellent piece about Theatre blogging to which I really should have refered in the above. Ho hum.

Consensus: right and wrong

As I mentioned briefly yesterday, one of the most frequently made comments on the Fringe this year is the perception that critical opinion is more scattergun than usual. Of course, on one hand, this is disquieting and disorienting for Fringe punters. With hardly any time to get to know the tastes and/or prejudices of individual critics/reviewers on the larger, multiple review titles (The Scotsman, Three Weeks, The List) trust becomes a precious resource. And corroboration is about as useful a way of establishing trust as anything. If five independent voices all agree that something is good/bad then they must be right, right?

And here’s where the other hand comes in. I’m not a big believer in the oft-voiced theory that the usual critical cadre (Billington, Spencer, Nightingale, de Jongh et. al.) all speak with one voice (see critical furores passim). But I am amused at the alarm with which the opposite situation is greeted. All year, a significant number of artists, other critics, and voices on the blogosphere have been calling for a more diverse range of opinion in the critical panoply. And now here one is. So much so that it feels roughly equivalent to the Infinite Monkeys school of criticism – at least one will write the review that you want to read. Of course there’s no guarantee that they will write it well, but you can’t have everything. And, surprisingly, no one seems very pleased with it. Well, those whom the Gods wish to destroy...

Many of the other criticisms levelled at critics remain. The lack of space being one. The Scotsman’s policy of only allocating 50-80 words for any one- or two-star show continues to appear as damaging as it is pragmatic. Curt dismissal with barely an adequate explanation is never going to be pleasant. At the same time, I appreciate the position of the reviewer who has seen potentially four or five shows every day who does not wish to spend further hours rehearsing their misery for any longer than is strictly necessary. Another criticism often aired is the editorial policy of sending, well, people who aren’t going to like a show to a show. Yes, in London it does sometimes seem perverse that the papers don’t have a wider range of critics, or that they send critics in order of seniority, rather than likely appreciation, to various openings –Lyn Gardner, for example, is manifestly more suited to assessment of much of the work now being produced at the National than Michael Billington, if only for the simple reason that she likes it and has sympathy for and interest in it and he frequently doesn’t. In Edinburgh it is often much harder to tell who will be “right”, since no one has anything like the same measure of one another. With few rare exceptions (Johann Hari), and contrary to popular opinion, critics don’t actively seek out turkeys for their own amusement. Few normal people actively relish sitting through shows which they don’t enjoy. No one enjoys being bored and irritated by something which is not to their taste.

What I found interesting is how similarly unreliable word-of-mouth recommendations can be. Edinburgh is a potentially testing time for many otherwise firm friendships. Greater love hath no man than that he lay down ten quid and an hour of his life on someone else’s say-so to watch Russian clowns/a one-woman-show/an eco-friendly mime cabaret.

I’ve also noticed that my own personal tastes this year are oddly out of step with the mainstream this year, with almost spookily tidy parallels. Three of the most widely recommended shows I’ve seen are Hugh Hughes in..., I Wish I Had a Sylvia Plath and Mile End - a one-man show, a one woman show and a new experimental piece respectively. The three shows that have impressed me most this year have been: Hippo World Guest Book, Simple Girl and La Femme est Morte - a one-man show, a one woman show and a new experimental piece respectively. It’s not that the popularity of the “mainstream” hits is wholly incomprehensible – all three have obvious merits and skill behind them, but without exception each lacks the spark, originality and excellence of its opposite number. And yet the shows on the mainstream list are gaining large audiences and my favourites less so. I find it somewhere between perplexing and mildly depressing. On the other hand, I do wonder if my continued championing of the three aforementioned shows is partially attributable to their “underdog” status. If each had been picked up by a huge audience, transferred to a larger space, and been awarded multiple garlands, would I feel as affectionate toward them? I’d like to think I would. But, perhaps, if I had seen Hughes, Plath and Mile End with small audiences and “discovered” them for myself I would have spent more time trying to promote them and less time saying “Yes, but...” to their many fans.

Edit: Melanie Wilson's penultimate show sold out, so I had probably better stop referring to her as an underdog. 

Pining for the Fringe

Still another week before I get to Edinburgh, but there are advantages in this. Not least that I can keep an eye on the early coverage. Which looks like it could be a full-time occupation this year with the broadsheets' online features looking more fulsome than ever before.

The Guardian, as the natural paper of most Fringe performers, has an eviable variety of guest writers and contributors including an ongoing story written an episode at a time by various comics, a blog by Mark Ravenhill on his premiere-a-day show Ravenhill For Breakfast and a daily podcast from critic Brian Logan and comedienne (-ette?) Lucy Porter.

Interestingly, the Telegraph's coverage is easily comparable - and benefits from a slightly more user-friendly design with the features mixed in with the reviews, allowing for a slightly more potted read. Of course, being the Telegraph, it also offers some excellent examples of philistine harrumphing and a picture of Stewart Lee (accompanying a charming interview) labelled "Stewart Lee studied English Literature at Oxford University" like a justification to the paper's normal constituency for its inclusion ("Why's this chap here, eh? Studied at Oxford, did he? Capital fellow, then. Spendid. Carry on...").

The Times online's stuff, once the sodding page has loaded, isn't especially impressive (my own tiny contribution to the NSDF stuff notwithstanding). The news report on the international festival is standard journalism at its press conference-attending best, while the lead article is little more than a collection of half-minute phone interviews based on a handful of flyers and virtually no connection to its initial premise.

The Independent's coverage is a characteristically sloppy mess: badly laid out, uninspiring, and, in the case of a non-story report on Ricky Gervais charging a lot for tickets managing to make the schoolboy error of confusing the Fringe with the International Festival.

And of course the Fringe wouldn't be the Fringe without Ian Shuttleworth from the Financial Times seeing more shows than all the other critics put together in his frankly masochistic, Salo-like efforts to see every damn thing out there.

William Shakespeare: middlebrow racist?

Annoyingly I'm having to write real reviews today (one on St Joan for the New Culture Forum and one on Merchant of Venice at the Globe for CultureWars). On top of this I have a couple of piece to write about the NSDF for the Times online's coverage of the Festival's presence in Edinburgh this year, and I still haven't done that piece for Dan Rebellato's Contemporary Theatre Review on the Barker funding debacle. On top of this, I'm sure I've got a couple of script reports to write up for Theatre 503.

This is all particularly annoying since I want to write a piece here about the combination of Othello and Merchant which I saw in a marathon (that really should be capitalised, shouldn't it?) seven-plus hour trip to the Globe yesterday (short version: Merchant - v. v. good. Othello - not so much) entitled "Shakespeare's Racist Plays". After describing our national playwright as "middlebrow" on Culture Clash the other night (even though I don't especially believe in the distinctions) I'm feeling a renewed interest in the Bard's work.

I think I stand by "middlebrow" incidentally: Shakespeare is, after all, far less concerned with flaunting his erudition (such as it was) than either Marlowe before him or Jonson after. If one allows that one's "brow"-rating is essentially elective (cf. Eliot and Pound choosing to self-describe "high art" for example) I don't think for a moment that "highbrow" is what Shakespeare was about. I like to imagine he'd have dismissed the entire notion of brows as hogwash. Conversely, if it is a label to be foisted upon work by critics, I really don't think that the "highbrow" label at all communicates even slightly the experience of what one sees when watching his plays.

I ought to clarify that I'm not imagining high- to low-brow as a sliding index of quality so much as intent. If anything Shakespeare gets "middle" by default for his mixture of "high" and "low" tropes. Still, I'm interested to know what other people think, both about Shakespeare and about the odd tendency to try to categorise art.

In the mean time, there's another fine example of the warring-critics school on Andy Field's blog, albeit one of the most civil and quickly concluded that I have seen.

p.s. In the most reassuring step yet taken by a Labour Arts Minister at 3.54pm James Purnell MP joined the group What Would Leo Do? on Facebook.

REVIEW

Readings, Potter, aesthetics and irresponsible behaviour

This afternoon I went to a rehearsed reading at the Old Vic of a newish American play called The Water’s Edge by a playwright called Theresa Rebeck. It had an impressive cast (including Diana Quick, who nearly 30 years on is still doomed to be remembered as Julia from the seminal Granada production of Brideshead Revisited) and was directed by Fiona Morrell, who I’m pretty sure is a friend of my friend Lilli Geissendorfer, who produced Fiona’s The Alice Project at the CPT recently.

Given that it was a private reading and was performed largely for the benefit of prospective producers, I’m unsure of the etiquette that surrounds such an event as regards write-ups on blogs. Well, no: I’m entirely sure. I would like this blog to function as a kind of back room/repository for all the longer, more rambly stuff that I don’t put in reviews, or write-ups of shows that I am not seeing in an “official” (ha!) capacity. Unfortunately, being as this is up on the web for all and sundry to peruse, I think there are still boundaries, and closed rehearsed readings are therefore off limits. I’m more than happy to tell anyone who wants to know what I thought of The Water’s Edge, in the pub (well, outside the pub while smoking), but no write-ups, I’m afraid.

Following the reading, I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I’m only slightly ashamed to say I thoroughly enjoyed for the most part. Granted, bits of it are nonsense and the ending lapses into another of those wizardy fight sequences which bore me to tears. But I really enjoy the way that some of the earlier parts of the story are handled. This is largely down to the elements that the previous director Mike Newell imported into the franchise’s aesthetic.

While the first two Chris Columbus-directed movies offered a wholesome, kiddy-friendly feel and Y Tu Mamá También director Alfonso Cuarón’s Prisoner of Azkaban took an wrong turning into slacker chic and not much sense, Mike Newell’s Goblet of Fire - while dealing with the novel that of the six made by and away the least sense - focused (at least some of the time) on some of the book’s more interestingly adult problems, and drafted in an aesthetic stolen almost wholesale from Brazil and 1984 - the world of British wizarding turned in one film from being a cutesy, medievalised theme park to a pretty dark vision of English totalitarianism. The flashback sequence from Goblet..., in which David Tennant is brought before a court in striped Auschwitz-style prisoner’s garb puts an entirely different complexion on how the audience is allowed to view the Ministry of Magic. It turns from a comforting upholder of justice to a suspect, totalitarian order which deals with its political enemies (admittedly, these are avowedly evil psychopaths) by sentencing them to life imprisonment and psychic torture/ As ideas go, it’s not all that deep, and a good proportion of my enjoyment derives solely from the fact that I do just love the Brazil/1984 look that the film has. But still, it kept me happy for a good while.

At some point, if I remember, I want to write a piece about aesthetics and judgement partially following on from my recent Culture Clash debate, but also trying to account for the fact that I’ve been curious for a while about the question of “taste”. What most interests me is the fact that there are things (artworks, pieces of music, aesthetics, novels) which really hit something in me, even while I’m rationally prepared to accept that on no “objective” (ha!) criteria are they actually any good, or at least not half so good as to account for my huge enjoyment of them. My longstanding love of seminal eighties post-punk/hilarious nineties metal outfit the Sisters of Mercy is one such example. It’s embarrassing. I know that. But for some reason they just keep on appealing to me, and wonder where that appeal comes from (sarcastic answers on a postcard, no doubt).

After all, as a critic you only have your judgement, your own personal subjective response, as a means to tackle anything. What are you meant to do with something which acutely appeals to your own personal tastes so strongly that you are completely seduced by it - rendered almost pre-rational by something which operates on a different part of your psyche to the bit normally employed when experiencing music/art/theatre? More on this when I’m more lucid, I think.

Another thing of which I’m acutely aware is the recent criminal lack of jokes on this blog. In lieu of thinking up any of my own, and to shamelessly jump onto a very old bandwagon, I shall leave you with the parental guidance classifications from Muswell Hill Odeon’s website which I came across this afternoon:

Harry Potter V (Contains moderate fantasy violence and horror)

Shrek III (Contains mild language and comic fight scenes.)

Die Hard 4.0 (Contains frequent action violence and one use of strong language)

Transformers (Contains moderate action violence)

Mr Bean’s Holiday (Contains irresponsible behaviour)

If this is a review...

It’s probably not terribly wise to criticise other critics. Especially in places where they could see it. Particularly not when they could comfortably pay your salary roughly five or six times over, and have a reputation and career that pisses over one’s own from a spectacular height.

That said, I am gobsmacked by this double review by M B at the Grauniad. As I have noted before, his current phase of Shaw-adoration is particularly rampant at the moment. Even so, this division of attention seems preposterous in the extreme.

Of course, I don’t know the circumstances of the review's production. It could well be that M B filed two beautifully turned pieces and they were mercilessly put to the scissors by an ill-mannered sub. Or it could be that M B had to argue hard for the inclusion of any word on the second production at all. And yes, he’s done a favour for what sounds (from what little one can glean) like a perfectly good production, insofar as they can now boast "vivacious... performed with a gusto... should appeal to adults and children alike."

But, 64 words? Jesus.

Edit: Out of curiosity, I just word-counted the above. It is 195 words long, or 3 x 65...

Edit v2.0: Perhaps I'm being unduly harsh to Michael, Benedict Nightingale doesn't seem to have been able to drum up much more enthusiasm for writing about it here.

Meanwhile...

I'm hoping to have a proper post up later this afternoon covering the second set of Rough Cuts at the Royal Court which I saw a week ago - not least since I see from my obsessive checking of my new blog stat counter that the Google searches which are most frequently finding this blog are those for "Laura Wade". It is hard not to speculate about who is conducting these searches. Does she have so many ardent admirers, forever trawling the net in search of their heroine? Apparently so. So I'd better not disappoint them.

In the mean time, and at the risk of turning my blog into little more than an alerts service for - and running commentary on - the Guardian's Theatre Blog, I shall draw your attention to this story from Lyn Gardner yesterday...

Oh, and I saw the much-praised Elling last night. Expect a CultureWars review, and possible meta-commentary here if I can't reasonably fit the questions it raised for me as part of a continuum about depictions of the relationship between madness and artistic/divine inspiration (cf. ...Dissocia, Speed Death..., St Joan) into the review proper...

And then expect millions of further posts about why I feel the need to divide my reviews into "proper" and "other" as my contribution to the brewing debate on what makes for good theatre criticism/writing-on-theatre (to borrow and paraphrase a better man's distinction) some time in the future.

. . stop press . . . stop press . . . stop press . . . stop press . . .

Another Google search for Ms Wade has just tipped someone onto the site. I just had a look to see if Postcards had somehow got to the top of Google's Wade references. It has not. It is on page 11. Someone is looking very thoroughly through mentions of her. How very strange.

Writing what you know

If, as I’m starting to suspect, all blogging is a long game of follow my leader, then, following Mark Ravenhill’s recent Guardian Arts blog post, this week’s hot topic is biographical readings of writers’ work. The subject has already kicked off a heated exchange on David Eldridge’s blog between him and critic Ian Shuttleworth*. Ravenhill’s original post is as fair-minded and witty as it is light, but he raises an interesting point. The most striking passage for me is his admission ‘I'd bump into friends from university and see they were longing to ask: “How long were you actually a rent boy for?” In the end, I decided all this gave me a grungy glamour. Without ever actually lying, I never disabused them of the notion.’

Of course he did. We all wanted to look grungy and glamorous in ’96. But there’s something else going on here. It is David Eldridge who connects it to Max Stafford-Clark, to whom the quotation “all plays are either autobiography or journalism,” is attributed. The way this belief manifested itself in Stafford-Clark’s work with writers has cast an extremely long shadow in its legacy for the Court.

A writer friend of mine, who shall remain nameless – for reasons which shall become clear – once wrote a provocative (and immediately countered) article for Noises Off magazine arguing that Graham Whybrow’s claim that he could identify the work of any Royal Court writer on the strength of a single page of their work was probably predicated on the fact that within the given page there’d either be a character who was a one-legged black lesbian; so it was probably by the Court’s one-legged black lesbian writer, or... so on, and so on.

I wouldn’t go that far, but it seems fair to say that for a while a certain brand of identity politics was at the very least not-discouraged, particularly around the young writers programme. I shall give a biographical example: - a few years ago a (different) writer friend who I knew from university had a play staged as part of the Royal Court’s Young Writer’s festival. I had produced an earlier (first?) play of his at university – it was a Camus-esque, Big Themes play in which six people gradually discover that they are in a lift to hell during some sort of (presciently enough) Islamist holocaust. His piece staged for the young writers’ programme was about growing up in as a Persian (which he was), in Wolverhampton (as he had) and working in one’s father’s corner shop (which he did). Perhaps it is unfair to blame the Royal Court for this – and perhaps it was the stronger play for not being so ambitious – but you can see from where the idea that they didn’t discourage a certain type of biographical authenticity comes.

This idea has turned on Max Stafford-Clark and bitten him on the arse at least once. There is a passage in Hanif Kureshi’s The Buddha of Suburbia in which the young Karim (a thinly veiled, wish-fulfillment version of a young Hanif Kureshi, m’lud) is working as a writer (as Kureshi did) with a director of strong left-wing inclinations, who is widely thought to be a thinly veiled version of M S-C (with whom Kureshi did indeed work when he was a young Royal Court playwright). The book contains a scene in which the director, along with his wife, seduces Karim and his girlfriend with the aim of essentially stealing the girlfriend. So much for teaching people to write what they know. This story has an amusing – if wholly apocryphal coda: when filming the excellent BBC adaptation some years later, the set for this (enormously memorable – at least to this impressionable young thing) scene was dressed to exactly resemble M S-C’s house. Shortly after this has been televised – so the apocryphal story goes – M S-C had invited a couple of people back to his house. They arrived at the house, and entered the living room in question.

“So, this is where it all happened, then?” says one of the party, with a knowing look.

Awkward silence descends for the rest of a much-shortened rest-of-evening.

But I digress.

While Ravenhill suggests that it is a little odd to be confused with a character from your play, he then goes on to note the useful critical insights that such a school of criticism can sometimes offer. Eldridge, however, uses the occasion to take some issue with his work being read autobiographically –understandably, given the personal repercussions which he describes. What is fascinating is the fact that he does not comment on the fact that the play has also been reviewed autobiographically. He cites some initial comments from Ian Shuttleworth’s review, but omits to mention the end:

“I come from a similarly sacrificing working-class family, and I keenly feel similar debts to the departed. I could therefore be expected to connect profoundly with Eldridge's play. But not a sausage, I'm afraid.”

As a critic (ha!), not a writer, I find this sort of thing fascinating. Shuttleworth, after all, is giving explicit and personal grounds for the reason that he didn’t like the play. No pretence of objectivity or Olympian judgment here. This is explicitly a man with a history, sitting in a theatre, watching a play about another man with an apparently similar history. While on one hand it suggests it should have been a pushover for the play to have *got* him, it simultaneously admits the possibility that as someone so strongly identifying with the subject matter, he may not be the best judge.

Critics are often criticised for the dual, contradictory sins of both pretended objectivity and excessive of subjectivity. I find it interesting (not to mention brave) how readily Charles Spencer will talk about his position as a recovering alcoholic to contextualise his response to works dealing in similar themes of addiction. Similarly, if you can find a review of a play about Belfast by Ian Shuttleworth in which doesn’t mention his connection to that city, then you’re a better man than I am.

I guess the point of all this is that all writers, not to mention directors, actors, probably sound-designers and lighting designers, and other artists of any stripe you care to mention, will bring something of themselves to their work - both wittingly and unwittingly; and those watching their work, whether writing about it or not, will speculate over it, as much as they will appreciate other elements and the whole. But is it really, as David Eldridge says, “reductive” or “wrong-headed” to speculate? In much the same way as his play pricked the curiosity of his reviewers with its incidental spatial and temporal intersections with his own life, isn’t it precisely these same sorts of starting points that often ambush writers with ideas?

At the same time, I do hope we have gone beyond the era of identity politics into one where “write what you know” is only a helpful suggestion rather than an absolute and final restriction. I don’t want to be party to a culture, which, when faced with two plays on any given issue, will always pick the one written by the person who has the closest personal connection to the issue over the play that is best, irrespective of its author.

So, write what you know. Or don’t. Some part of you will creep in anyway and give your biographers and critics something to agonise over. But, if you are writing about what you know, please don’t do what John le Carré does and forget to tell everyone what it is you know before continuing the story; it makes it almost impossible to understand.

*In the interests of full biographical disclosure, Ian and I have a long personal history; I don’t know Mr Eldridge at all.