I know what you think. It's all gravy: the free tickets, the gala openings, the beautiful actresses vying for my attention, the editors paying me astronomical sums, and then sending me on junkets to Broadway and the Avignon Festival. Yeah, the life of a theater critic must look pretty thrilling. Nice work, if you can get it.But there are drawbacks; hazards; a downside. So here, lest the fantasy overwhelm the stark reality, are some of the problems I face as I try to do this thing right. Think about these before you give up your day job:
I'm Stuck Till the Final Curtain. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to walk out on a terrible show — not tastelessly, while the actors are acting, but at intermission, when all the other exasperated patrons are heading to their cars and congratulating themselves on having the intelligence not to put themselves through another act (or two) of torture. But I can't avail myself of this luxury. I'm pledged to report the whole play to my readers, not just the execrable first hour. And then there's always the possibility — rare, unlikely, counterintuitive — that in Act Two the script or performers will suddenly shine, that all of Act One's horrors will give way to Act Two's splendors. How often does this happen? Well, I've written over 300 columns in the last six years, and the answer is: almost never. What stinks at the outset usually stinks at the end. And I, dear reader, can't escape into the fragrant night. Do not envy me. Pity me.
I Appear to Want to Destroy New Theater Companies. As I've said many times: there aren't nearly enough theater companies in the Tampa Bay area. Our burgeoning metropolis should have many, many more, there are venues around town that are dark unnecessarily, and surely the time has finally come when the tens of thousands who patronize the Buccaneers, Lightning and Devil Rays will give up a few hundred customers to the sport of Shakespeare, Ibsen and Mamet. So what happens in reality? Some industrious theater lovers come along with big ideas and no money. Unable to pay top actors and capable designers, they put on a first production that's hopelessly botched. Now comes my review. As happy as I am that a new company's getting started, I can't encourage my readers to waste their time and their ticket money on a substandard show. So I pan the thing — as courteously as honesty allows — and add, a little guiltily, my hope that the new company will have a successful future. But money (and the wisdom to flourish even without it) don't suddenly appear: shows two and three turn out to be as disastrous as show one, and again I have to speak truth, and now it's beginning to look like I have it in for this new venture. Am I some sort of hypocrite? How can I claim to want new theaters in the area when I repeatedly savage the early attempts of Jobsite, Alley Cat, Bayshore, Gypsy, Acorn, Salerno? Fortunately, some new theaters really do excel in their fourth or 12th production, and when I write that rave review, I can almost hear the artistic director's thought: "So. You've finally seen the light." What he or she was thinking before that — what I saw in those steely eyes as we passed in the lobby — can't be repeated in a family newspaper. I endure it for you, reader.
I'm Persona Non Grata. On a similar note: Did you ever go to a party uninvited, one where you knew, without a doubt, that you simply weren't wanted? Well, that's what I feel seven or eight times a year at Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota. The story is this: I was reviewing a meaningless triviality of a play called Olympus on My Mind and I quoted the FST mission statement — something about producing theater of the highest importance — in order to point out that the company, in presenting Olympus, wasn't living up to its own ideals. A few days later, my editor received a lengthy, detailed letter from FST, explaining that I'd criticized one production of theirs too many, and that henceforth their press office would not invite me to their shows. My editor insisted that I still had the right to see their plays as a private citizen, and FST conceded the point. But now when I attend their plays — many of which I've admired, by the way — I have the uncomfortable feeling that the ticket-seller, the usher, the woman who makes the little speech before the show starts — they're all looking at me and thinking: we told him not to come here. He's an intruder. He's bad. Tell me I'm imagining it, but like the psychologists say, we need to talk about what you feel. What I feel is: I'm FST's pariah. I'm an undesirable. They despise me. All right, I know I should know better. But I can't help it: I think they hate me. I can't explain it any better than that.
I Have to Say Bad Things About Nice People. Some of the nicest people I know are actors, playwrights, directors and theater administrators. And some of them — how can I say this? — have yet to reach the fullest expression of their talent. Now, as I hope you've already gathered, I take honesty to be the one essential quality of a good critic (a background in theater doesn't hurt either, by the way), and I've basically pledged to myself that I'll ply this trade honestly or not at all. The upshot: though I know Suzy Goode to be a saint among women, loved by all her friends, magnanimous and altruistic (she's paying her dreadfully needy family's bills with her meager acting income), I still have to note that she's a lousy Desdemona.
That she garbles her words. That she's no Shakespearean actress.
And reader, that sometimes hurts.
There's More, of Course. There's the inauthenticity of relations with people one might review, there's the despair at seeing one's favorite plays butchered, there's the anxiety of having to write a review only minutes after seeing a show, before one's had the chance to mull it over, really think about it. And there's the unremitting awkwardness of being introduced to people you had reason — published reason — to hope you'd never meet.
And still — I love this job. The benefits are manifold: exposure to often great acting, stunning design, wonderful directing. The joy of seeing a splendid text produced splendidly, the pleasure of alerting my readers to a superb new offering, the surprise of seeing an evolving performer make a breakthrough, the discovery of powerful plays I'd never heard of, and the satisfaction of seeing a classic made delightfully new. When a theater announces its new season, I read the bulletin hungrily, avidly, with delicious anticipation. I can't help it: I feel privileged to have these experiences to look forward to.
So yeah, the benefits well outweigh the liabilities.
See you at one of those gala openings.
mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or letters@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2004.