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BrauBlog

Why are theater critics such lackeys?

By David Brauer | Published Fri, May 29 2009 12:25 pm

As a media critic, I was fascinated with the news that the Guthrie pulled its invitations to national theater critics, instead urging them to not review Tony Kushner's shambolic "Intelligent Homosexual" — and the critics agreed!

New York Times chief theater critic Ben Brantley not only complied, he told the PiPress' Dominic Papatola, "Any new play by Tony Kushner is an event, and I look forward to being allowed to see it someday."

Most of us media jerks would have us rebooked on the first flight out. Kushner's play wasn't a preview, it was a full-blown world premiere. If he's turning tail on his own creation, doesn't seeing it become more newsworthy?

Apparently, things are more urbane among the theater set. Seeking explanation, I sought out Papatola, himself a longtime critic who reviewed the play (unfavorably) for local audiences.

Papatola says Kushner's request — which the Guthrie forwarded — messes with a long-held "understanding" between critics and theaters. In general, critics don't review plays in preview, giving playwrights and productions a chance to hone work before a paying crowd.

Further, New York critics don't review Broadway-bound plays that open out of town — one big reason producers open out of town in the first place.

"Most of the critics have this situation where they understand the piece is not ready for you to look at, and most of us are amenable to that situation," Papatola explains. "We're journalists, but we're critics too, and we want to see the piece at the point in development when it's done."

(Thank God baseball writers don't feel this way about spring training.)

The problem here is that Kushner "sort of changed the rules in mid-game," Papatola notes. There was nothing preview-y about "Intelligent Homosexual" — and no Broadway show was scheduled ... at least until yesterday, when the Strib's Claude Peck broke news of a 2010 Big Apple premiere.

That development seemed conveniently timed to give Brantley an excuse to stay away. Not that the Timesman was pleased about it.

Terming the move "badly handled," Brantley told Papatola, "The decision to disinvite us was made after we had purchased plane tickets and, in my case, postponed a trip to London. I'll certainly think twice before booking a trip to the Guthrie again."

(To be fair, Brantley's "being allowed to see it" quip seems sarcastic rather than compliant, even if he complied with the playwright's dictum.)

Given Kushner's reknown — he won a Pulitzer for "Angels in America" and apparently blew his Guthrie deadline writing a Stephen Spielberg movie about Abe Lincoln — wasn't Broadway inevitable?

Not necessarily, Papatola replied, recalling the 2002 world premiere of Pulitzer winner Arthur Miller's "Resurrection Blues," also at the Guthrie. "I think it played one other theater, then died on the vine," Papatola says.

Apparently, Kushner gets what is known in golf as a mulligan, or on the playground as a "do-over," an option I'm sure artists everywhere wish they had.

As a Times subscriber, I remain mystified why Brantley can't review the play now, and again when it hits the Great White Way. If anything, the Minneapolis production is more newsworthy at the moment, and won't be any less newsworthy next year.

Media | Fri, May 29 2009 12:25 pm | 17 Comments

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17 Comments: Hide/Show Comments

(#1) On May 29, 2009, Hiram Foster says:

My thought is that Joe Dowling seems to be working for Tony Kushner, not the Guthrie Theater. I think the exposure in the national press would be good for the Guthrie, which hasn't been getting much of it lately.

What's the point in putting on high profile plays and then trying to keep them a secret?

(#2) On May 29, 2009, Chris Steller says:

Does massive public subsidy for the Guthrie tip the scales toward a more aggressive journalistic approach?

Not only that, this is an industry (for lack of a better word) that now has a constitutionally-guaranteed grip on the state's sales-tax coffers.

Not saying it's too much state support for the theater arts, maybe it's not enough still.

But when the Lege funded the new Guthrie and Minnesotans voted to tax themselves to preserve cultural heritage, I don't think they had in mind preserving critical conventions, at all costs.

(#3) On May 29, 2009, Dara Grumdahl says:

Can't speak to this debate, but all critical fields have their own rules. In restaurants we typically wait 6 weeks -- as laid out in the Association of Food Journalists guidelines -- before reviewing a new restaurant. Not always, but I just throw that out there as an example of different sorts of criticism having different criteria. The reason we do is first, to give readers a fair picture of the level of execution and service restaurant, which they wouldn't get from an opening-night review (opening nights are wild cards in all sorts of ways) and second to be fair to the restaurants.

If I knew that, say, a new Asian-Fusion restaurant was going to change to Vietnamese in a few weeks and they put out word not to review it I'd comply because it would be a waste of my employers' money and my readers' time to do otherwise -- I wonder if this is analagous?

(#4) On May 29, 2009, Hiram Foster says:

It seems to me that we are all grown ups here. If the Guthrie Theater is opening it's doors to an audience for this play, if they are charging the pretty hefty amount I see on my season tickets, they should be open to critical scrutiny.

(#5) On May 29, 2009, Hiram Foster says:

As one of it's members, I don't much care for the notion that an audience out side of New York is just so many lab rats on which plays are to be tested.

(#6) On May 29, 2009, Hiram Foster says:

"Does massive public subsidy for the Guthrie tip the scales toward a more aggressive journalistic approach?"

Well, I am pretty sure that the fact that the Guthrie gets some of our taxpayer dollars, which I personally don't begrudge them, isn't a reason for giving them less coverage, aggressive or otherwise.

If the critics, national or local worked for the Guthrie, the Guthrie would have the right to tell them what to do. But they don't. This is a play that's not in preview, it's open to the public, and we can only hope that it's sufficiently of interest to the readers of newspapers to merit a review.

(#7) On May 30, 2009, Laird Benoir says:

I can see it now -- a Broadway-bound play being unveiled in Minneapolis with the actors not involved at present killing time by running laps around the stage. Just like in Fort Myers.

(#8) On May 30, 2009, Hiram Foster says:

When the world was young, there was a time when the Guthrie mattered, when those who ran the theater believed that what happened on the stage was of more interest and more interest than the building that enclosed it. Those days are behind us now and perhaps irretrievably lost. Today's Guthrie has grown out of the brashness, vulgarity and the excitement of it's youth, into a cautious and careful middle age. The Guthrie is now a good and substantial corporate citizen whose respectability is guaranteed by a hefty mortgage.

But every once in a while, an opportunity presents itself for the Guthrie to shake off the burdens and attitudes of middle age, an opportunity to both offend and delight. One would hope the Kushner plays might present such an opportunity. Maybe the greater hope is that the decision to put on the Kushner reflects a desire by the current management to throw off the burdens of middle age, and try to recapture for just a moment, the thrill of the company's youth.

Let's follow through here. Let's make the decision to be brash. If the Guthrie wants to make the decision to be important again, let's proclaim the decision as widely as we can. Let's open our doors to the world, and let the jaded New York critics do their worst.

(#9) On May 30, 2009, Ann Spencer says:

I ran this situation by my daughter, who is general manager of an off-Broadway theater. According to her, a request to critics not to review a piece at its current stage of development is routinely honored as a matter of professional courtesy. Technically, of course, the Guthrie cannot "disinvite" critics or prevent them from publishing a review. They are free as members of the public to purchase a ticket and as members of a free press review the piece. But a critic who goes against a specific request of this nature will be in hot water with peers and the theater community.

I don't blame the Guthrie for this kerfuffle; it appears that Mr. Kushner did not deliver a finished product as promised. At that point, the Guthrie had already advertised and promoted the event as the premiere of a finished play, not a "preview" or "work-in-progress."

(#10) On June 1, 2009, Hiram Foster says:

I just look back with nostalgia on the glory days when New York critics came here to review plays, and the company didn't need to hire them to give speeches in order to bring them to town. I freely admit that I am enough of a provincial and enough of a hayseed, to have enjoyed the national attention the Guthrie earned on it's own back then.

(#11) On June 1, 2009, Beryl John-Knudson says:

Must the Guthrie genuflect, to whom?

Hiram Foster's #8 response sounds most reasonable an explanation to me,an outsider but with my nose insecurely pressed against the window here, but...it reminds me that the world of theatre is asked to take a giant step back in time when, be it poets,writers; artists and their public performances; whatever the medium of their creative accomplishments...the heartland was consistantly considered secondary, automatically.

Sounds like there is a need to challenge the same 'ol status quo again, which was the state of the arts once-upon-a-time, going way back to the fifties and even earlier (examples like Fred Manfred,landsman novelist or Tom McGrath, late, great plains poet)...when none were given respectable applause or all-embracing recognition or positive credibility, until they had run the gauntlet of eastern establishment gurus and their final critiques?

By honoring such an archaic approval system - from the Lord-god New York. and attendant points east - we are shuffling backwards, and accepting passively? I hope not.

(#12) On June 1, 2009, Ann Spencer says:

Some of the posters above seem to believe this is a case of "real people in the Midwest vs. those elitist snobs in New York" and that by honoring Mr. Kushner's desire to withdraw the invitation to national critics, the Guthrie is somehow genuflecting to the eastern establishment. I don't think that's the issue. Like any other subculture, the theater has its own rules of conduct, written and unwritten. Honoring a request not to review a piece at its current stage of development is apparently one of them.

If we REALLY want to look like a bunch of rubes, a great way to do it would be for the Guthrie to, in effect, declare "you're not the boss of me!" and defiantly flout this convention. With one fell swoop, the Guthrie would tick off a major American playwright and make itself persona non grata among other theaters. We aren't going to prove anything to anybody--except that we have a chronic inferiority complex and a huge chip on our shoulders--by such conduct.

(#13) On June 1, 2009, Beryl John-Knudson says:

Better to look like a prufrockian Guthrie town than "a bunch of rubes"?...one state of mind pretty much defines the other I suppose.

Riddle: Is it a matter of talent (or sometimes, mediocrity) exposing itself on grub street...or Grub Street...whose to say which is the more respectable, acceptable exposure?

Anyone's guess is as good as...whomever.

(#14) On June 1, 2009, Hiram Foster says:

I don't mind at all looking like a rube. The fact that I care what the national press thinks of our little regional theater tends to prove the point.

(#15) On June 1, 2009, Ann Spencer says:

OK, Beryl and Hiram, I'll take the bait and wade in one more time!

Once the national critics knew that Kushner did not want the play reviewed at this stage, they would not have reviewed it, regardless of what the Guthrie said. In other words, it wasn't the Guthrie's withdrawal of the invitation, but their own "code of conduct" that kicked in at that point. Their reputations as fair players in the theater world were on the line and I doubt they would have jeopardized them even if the Guthrie had begged then on bended knee to publish a review. And for the Guthrie to flout the playwright's wishes in that fashion would have been extremely unprofessional.

(#16) On June 1, 2009, Hiram Foster says:

While critics do understand the concept of previews, at some point plays do become reviewable, whether the playwright or the theater objects or not. Mr. Kushner's play is not in preview. It is a fully staged production in it's regular run here in Minneapolis. People are being charged full Guthrie prices for tickets.

Critics work for their newspapers, and they serve their readers. Those are the constituencies to whom they owe an obligation of fairness. By not covering a major theatrical event, they are not doing that.

(#17) On June 2, 2009, Charles Quimby says:

http://www.greatdiv.com

I'm with Ann Spencer. On the Guthrie's side, it built a major portion of its season around Kushner (http://www.guthrietheater.org/kushner) and perhaps he let the theater down by delivering a less-than-complete commission that was to be its centerpiece. It was put in a very difficult spot.

On Kushner's side, the artist should get to decide when a work is finished, and plays are a particular artform that is not really complete until it is brought to life in some way on the stage.

When it became apparent the new play was still in progress, local critics like Papatola made it clear in advance (to me, at least) that the public would not be seeing a production of a fully realized play.

And the correct baseball analogy is not spring training. It's Joe Mauer not playing at the start of the season.

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David Brauer authors Braublog and is MinnPost's local media reporter. He's covered media and politics as a writer and editor since 1983 for City Pages, the Southwest/Downtown Journal, KFAN and KSTP-AM, Mpls.St.Paul, Minnesota Monthly, Law & Politics, the Business Journal, KARE11 and national outlets. Follow him on Twitter. Email: dbrauer [at] minnpost [dot] com.

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