lame reviews

So King Lear recently got a review online, and I have to say, it's one of the worst reviews I've ever read. And doesn't even trash the show. It's just poorly written, poorly conceived, and, well, lame.

My impression of it? "King Lear was good. The acting was nice. The park was dumb."

New York theatre reviewers, especially those online, vary greatly in skill and ability. There are many (at nytheatre.com, especially) who are well trained, have great eyes, can pinpoint a problem without trashing a production and who, in general, can be critical without being denigrating. They can craft reviews that have some flow to them, that raise engaging questions and read well. (Confession: a large number of them are friends of mine, so I know these things are true beyond just reading their reviews.) But they must all be on summer vacation, because what we got was seriously less qualified than that.

Come on, nytheatre.com! Have some standards! I'm not going to mock the reviewer herself (although it's SORELY tempting to do so) (sigh) (ok, go here to do so yourself, but don't tell them I sent you), but I am going to hold the site responsible for having reviewers with sub-par reviewing (nay, sub-par writing) skills. Granted, this appears to be her first review. And in it, she makes a couple of very valid points (especially that the double-casting in our production makes the characters in disguise hard to tell from the actors playing two roles). However, half of her thesis argument (if you can call it that) ["the thematic issue of how we treat the elderly."] was so poorly handled that I wondered why it was in there at all.

Her review reads more like a blog, which, while there's space for that in our society (um, right?) I'm not sure that that's where theatre review should be headed.

I'm only angry because the institution of theatre has for centuries held the reviewer like a god -- to be feared, revered and heeded (hed?). And to find someone so un-godly posting her opinions about theatre (let alone my show) just makes me feel like, yet again, the art of our craft (in all its forms and varieties) is sliding. But then again, I've always been something of an elitist (especially where theatre and acting is concerned), and perhaps this is just a democratizing of the process. [Boo to artistic democracy! but more on that some other time.]

Every actor hopes to find something useful in a review -- something she can add to her marketing materials, something to reinforce her own belief in her performance, or something to highlight problems to a director in hopes that they'll be addressed. And while "the pretty Kate Surgeon is effective as Regan" is not unusable it's, just, well... lame.

Blah blah blah, I could review her review and you could find it just as pathetic as the original. But when you mock me, please note that a) I'm writing on myspace, b) nobody's paying me to do so, and c) I use terms more nuanced than "excellent" "effective" and "funny." I say things like "worst" and "lame."