The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (25 page)

Michael Portantiere:
I reviewed
Phantom of the Opera
when it originally opened. In retrospect, I don’t think I was as negative as I should have been.

Zachary Stewart:
I wrote a very effusive review of the musical
Kinky Boots
when it first debuted. In retrospect, the show is quite safe and predictable. The “be who you want to be” message has become a theatrical cliché, a way to draw in the money of gays and the people who love them. It really doesn’t challenge our conventional wisdom. If I had to rewrite the review, I’d mention that, although I think the problem has become even more pronounced in the years following that show’s Tony win.

Michael Schulman:
There was a musical called
Thrill Me
that I reviewed Off-Broadway at the York Theatre Company. I sort of hammered it. Later, I wondered whether it really deserved that kind of scorn. I wouldn’t be softer in my opinion now, but I’d modulate the tone. You should only employ pure, unadulterated snark when it’s really deserved—like when you think someone had bad intentions.

Richard Zoglin:
I think my review of
The Bridges of Madison County
was too favorable. I didn’t like it all that much, but I did like the music and the performances, and I ended up writing a nice review of it.

Roma Torre:
Going way back, there was a review I did rewrite. It might have been
Waiting for Godot
. I forget which production it was. I hated it the first time I saw it and wrote a really nasty review, but then I saw it again and got it. It just didn’t work for me the first time. At the time, I thought to myself, I know I’m missing something. This is supposed to be a great piece of writing, and I’m just not getting it at all. When I went back to see it, I realized what I was missing.

Adam Feldman:
Sometimes you can be harder on good shows than bad ones. If it aims low and succeeds, you sort of give it a pass. If it aims high and doesn’t quite make it, you end up writing a review that sounds quite critical. There’s a Craig Lucas play called
Small Tragedy
that I still beat myself up for. I ended it with a cheap one-liner, but there was a great deal to admire about the show, and I’m sorry that I ended the review on a note that sounded like I was condemning the whole show.

John Lahr:
I got into trouble with my review of
The Book of Mormon
. I gently teased Scott Rudin in print because he was being such a control freak. He wouldn’t give me the script prior to seeing the show. I just wanted to write well about the show, but the general view was that I had abused my power—and I suppose that on one level, I did. In retrospect, I’m sorry about it, and I would take it back if I could—not my opinion on the show, just the teasing of Scott Rudin. He banned me from his shows for about a year. I previously had a really good relationship with him. He would call me up or send a note if he liked a review.

Peter Marks:
The one I always point to is the musical
Glory Days
, which closed after its opening night on Broadway in 2008. I wrote a very encouraging review when the show premiered at the Signature Theatre in D.C., and some very inexperienced producers took it as a ticket to Broadway. I was trying to be encouraging to a young musical theater writer who had talent. If someone had said to me, “We’re thinking of moving this to Broadway,” I would have said, “It’s not ready.” I should have said that the writer’s next musical was probably going to be better, so I kick myself for that. It had a real charm at Signature, but maybe it was too sincere for its own good.

Terry Teachout:
I’m in an unusual position compared to other critics because I make a point of reviewing regional productions of plays that I previously reviewed in New York, so I do get a second chance to engage with shows that maybe I didn’t quite get the first time around. A really good example would be
The History Boys
. I wouldn’t say I didn’t get it when I reviewed it on Broadway, but I didn’t get it as well as when I saw it a second time at the TimeLine Theatre in Chicago. I got a chance to go into it at greater length, and to think more about how the play came across when I was seeing a very different kind of production. I make a real effort to see what I think of new plays after they’ve been around for a couple of years. Right now, I am looking for an opportunity to review
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
. I’m very curious to see how it will hold up.

Matthew Murray:
I think my review of the 2007 Broadway musical
The Pirate Queen
(by, among others,
Les Miz
and
Miss Saigon
writers Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil) was too affected by what else was happening in the industry at the time. This was when
Spring Awakening
(which I thought was absolutely terrible) was getting so much attention. I might have come across as more positive than I should have, and my enthusiasm probably should have been tempered a bit. But most of the time, I’m willing to go back and defend pretty much anything I’ve written.

MATT WINDMAN
: What kind of audience do you see yourself writing for?

Steven Suskin:
Different readerships have different expectations.

Hilton Als:
That’s a very interesting question—and one that I don’t think I can answer. If you have an audience in mind, then you’re not really writing. I think you need to just do your writing. Frankly, I’ve never felt inhibited at the
New Yorker
or the
Village Voice
.

Jesse Green:
I don’t know who my readers are—and I don’t know how I could learn. I guess I have a certain impression, but I fear it’s a stereotype because it’s based on occasional encounters, rather than on any kind of reliable data.
New York
magazine hosts what it calls the
Vulture
Festival each year, which is kind of like the
New Yorker
Festival, but less stuffy. A lot of readers come to that, so you get a sense of what they’re like. My feeling is that they are culturally savvy. They seem to be youngish, but there’s also an older generation of New Yorkers who have always read
New York
magazine for its smart tone and cultural coverage. Do they go to the theater more than the readers of the
Village Voice
or the
New York Times
? I have no way of knowing that. In any case, it doesn’t influence my writing. The dirty secret of all writing is that you’re not writing for an audience—you’re writing for yourself.

John Simon:
To some extent, you have to play with the expectations of the publication and its mucky-mucks, but essentially I am not influenced by the publication—even ones like the
New Criterion
or the
Weekly Standard
. As a result, I may be a little too much for some people. I can’t help it. That means too much to me to skirt.

Robert Faires:
The audience is kind of invented in my head. It tends to be somebody who shares my love of theater and who wants to know what’s happening out there. I don’t have a very clear sense of demographics. When I was in my twenties, I figured that people in their twenties were reading me. Now that I’m in my fifties, I couldn’t tell you whether people in their twenties are reading me. I have no idea if my audience is male, female, married, or single. That stuff is kind of a blank for me.

Michael Riedel:
To be honest, I’m really writing for myself. First and foremost, what I write has to interest me. If it bores me, it’s going to bore anyone reading it. If it amuses me, or if I find it interesting, then I can only assume that people who are reading it will find it interesting.

Chris Jones:
I don’t want to be arrogant, but I know a lot of plays. On the other hand, I write for a general newspaper, so my job is not to write for specialists. For the most part, I write for ordinary people. Chicago is a no-nonsense kind of city, so it’s not like I can write academic theses on these shows.

Ben Brantley:
I write for an audience that has some knowledge of theater and is interested in theater to begin with. I’m not starting from scratch with these readers.

Matthew Murray:
TalkinBroadway.com
is a site by and for theater lovers, so I tend to approach each show with that in mind. I’m not coming at things the way reviewers do when they’re writing for a broader, more general audience, and I’m fine with that. Our site is most famous (or infamous) for its
All That Chat
discussion board, which since 1997 has been one of the most active and engaged theater chat groups on the Internet. My opinions don’t always line up with those of all, or even most, of the posters on
All That Chat
, but I like to think they’re at least representative of what you get from them.

Alexis Soloski:
When I first started with the
Village Voice
, it was what everyone downtown was reading. The audience was young, fairly well-educated, and interested in going out and taking advantage of New York. I’m not too sure what the audience is now.

Michael Musto:
My readership is predominately gay, but it’s also predominant of people who care about culture, as seen from my slightly jaundiced but optimistic point of view. I just write what comes naturally to me without limitations, and that tends to find a very savvy audience that includes people who really do care about theater, even if they don’t go that often.

Don Aucoin:
Newspaper readers are general readers. They’re usually intelligent, cultured, and educated, but they’re not theater insiders. They’re not necessarily subscribers to
American Theatre
magazine. I hope all the readers of the
Globe
are at least occasionally checking out the theater reviews. The core demographic that tends to populate theaters is middle-aged and older. It’s just a fact that people in their college years or teenage years are not big theatergoers.

Michael Schulman:
I like to think the
New Yorker
audience is adventurous in its theatergoing. They’ll go to something at St. Ann’s Warehouse or Brooklyn Academy of Music or the Public Theater. They’ll go to some more obscure place. I think of them as New Yorkers—not tourists or out-of-towners. One
New Yorker
writer, Michael Specter, once said that he thinks the
New Yorker
reader is someone who’s extremely accomplished in a field that has nothing to do with what he’s reading about. For instance, the imaginary reader might be an extremely accomplished musician who’s reading about a public health issue. If you’re writing about theater, you might be writing for a heart surgeon.
New Yorker
readers are intellectually curious generalists.

The people who are reading the theater reviews want to have a good reading experience. The
New Yorker
is known for its writing. It’s not a consumer guide for buying tickets. We need to give the readers some sort of literary satisfaction. Hilton Als and John Lahr are both wonderful literary stylists. Even if you have no interest in seeing
Rocky
, you can read Hilton’s review of
Rocky
and find some beautiful turn of phrase in it, or some joke in Anthony Lane’s movie review of
The Hulk
.

Elysa Gardner:
USA Today
has a varied audience. Obviously, there are a lot of business travelers—people who read the paper at a hotel or on an airplane while en route somewhere. The entertainment section appeals to a slightly younger demographic, but I try to write for everyone. I never think, I have to write for this specific audience. I just try to communicate as clearly and entertainingly as I can for everyone.

Adam Feldman:
Time Out
has an intellectually and culturally engaged readership that wants to see things that are entertaining and smart, and I try to write from that perspective. I’m lucky to write for an audience that, by virtue of the magazine itself, is interested in going out and seeing what New York has to offer. That’s a lovely group of people to write for.

Frank Rizzo:
You have to know who you’re writing for. I’m not writing this for myself. I’m writing for a particular market, and for a particular periodical, and the writing has to be for that specific audience. I write for a general circulation audience at the
Hartford Courant
. I like to think of my aunt picking up the paper and reading it. She doesn’t know who Jayne Atkinson is. She might not even know who Henrik Ibsen is, but I want her to be engaged while reading the review. I want her to find it interesting, entertaining, and truthful. I’ve also done freelance work for the
New York Times
, and that writing is a bit different because its audience is savvier in terms of theater.

Jesse Oxfeld:
I always had my parents in mind with the
Observer
. They’re the kind of people who spend money to go to the theater a couple of times a month, like your typical New Yorker or suburbanite. They didn’t need to be convinced to go to the theater or be told that
The Book of Mormon
was the one thing they needed to see. They were people who go to the theater a certain number of nights each year, and I was telling them which shows they should see.

Richard Ouzounian:
They are incredibly varied ethnically. As Toronto started to become the great multicultural capital of the world, the
Star
hired columnists to speak to their concerns and made the paper accessible to them. I don’t just have a bunch of old, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant people reading me.

Richard Zoglin:
I’m writing for an audience at
Time
that is not really hardcore theater buffs. It’s a general audience. I try to look at theater from the largest perspective. I don’t assume any knowledge on the part of my readers. I’m not comparing a production to one from 10 years ago.

Roma Torre:
The NY1 audience is a mix. It changes throughout the day. The morning audience is a little more savvy and sophisticated. Later on, the audience is perhaps more blue-collar—people who don’t work nine-to-five jobs, like restaurant workers and cab drivers and mothers at home. I’m not sure who the audience is at night. Generally speaking, it’s hardcore New Yorkers who cross all economic classes and cultures, and they’re diehard. People will quote things to me that I said a year ago. They really pay attention. We were designed for a New York City audience, and that really is who’s watching us.