Crrritic!

Crritic!” Estragon famously yells “with finality” in his comic – or is it serious? – argument with Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. It is the insult to end all insults. And deeply insulted Vladimir seems to be. It puts an end to that phase of their banter and elicits many a laugh amongst the audience, who might perchance turn slightly, trying to catch a glimpse of any man silently slipping his pencil and paper out of sight and mind as he wonders whether his kind really is hated that much. After all, who would put up his hand and volunteer to wear the badge that says ‘critic’ in the theatre, concert hall or cinema, when it could equally say ‘person who values own opinions highly’? Or outside these establishments, for that matter, especially when the adjectival equivalent has synonyms like ‘perpetually unsatisfied with everything’ or ‘pedantic old bastard’? Not Vladimir.

Unappealing connotations aside, is this insult justified? And if it is, isn’t it still a joke for Beckett, revelling in his own wit? I can see him now, the old Irish great in heaven (for some reason the image is in black and white), sitting and smoking (most likely) and watching with childish glee. And what does he see? He sees literati and critics alike feebly flailing, writhing and wrestling with his remark. They are anxious because a tiny little part of each of them thinks he is right to be serious, and they want him to be joking or else their work is, well… somewhat undermined.

It is true that one cannot simply give condemning judgments of a piece of theatre alone, and anyone who does so deserves to be insulted. But if a satisfactory explanation is handed over in the same package, Estragon’s insult becomes unjustified. Then again, despite the intricacy of theatre criticism’s subject, it is written largely for the masses to read in the paper over breakfast, mug of coffee in hand, so in many ways it works like an advert. It is not for cast and crew to use as an additional set of director’s notes after the first performance, though you could be fooled into thinking otherwise. If the review is good, said breakfast-time-peruser might perchance twaddle up to London to see the thing for themselves.

So, the reviewer’s duty is not to the theatre or producer, the director or the actors; it is to the good old British public – or the students of Durham for us. He has to write something short and sweet (or savoury, if the play is not so hot). You might wonder why I emphasise “has”. It is because in Durham reviewers are allocated plays on a first come, first served basis. In Palatinate English, this means that said person who comes first will supposedly produce a review of an appropriate length on the right day (professional critics leave the theatre at 10.30 pm and have to hand in their reviews ninety minutes later so it can all go to press on time, don’t you know, so really there’s no excuse).

Reviews that don’t materialise have two rather unnerving effects. Firstly, stage editors become abnormally irate, they go very quiet, become sullen, sulky, ghostly pale – a bit like Edward Cullen. Then they miraculously procure a review from an unknown corner of Durham at no small effort. As I write, their cries of frustration are filling the Palatinate office, and I’m learning several new and obscure expletives that are most certainly not suitable to be noted down here. Secondly, theatre companies who have put up two free tickets for the reviewer-ghost, despite being on a tight budget, morph into enraged animals – wolves larger than bears, I’ve seen them – and start hunting the stage editors. Which is no fun for them, as you can probably imagine. It seems to me that the best solution would be for the wolves and vampires that are the theatre companies and stage editors to join forces and ruthlessly hunt down said ghost-reviewers. After all, this is a reciprocal society – you give when you receive – and they both want the same thing: a review for their money.

So, on to the review itself. Although a reviewer has a duty to support his argument, five words are enough; five sentences, too many. If he opts for the latter, no one will read it. What a waste. We don’t expect the review of the latest Florence and the Machine track or Tim Burton’s newest film to be riddled with minutiae with which only they can engage. Granted, it is interesting to have the odd article which is more penetrating than the rest, but if they’re all pushing the 700 word mark, no one’s going to make it to the end of anything. If they do, they will more than likely
a) be involved in the show
b) be a friend of cast/crew/reviewer
c) be involved in serious procrastination
d) have missed out the juicy stuff in the
middle to get to the concluding pearls
of wisdom.

‘Why do you publish such long reviews then?’ I hear you cry in outrage. ‘It’s much easier to write a long letter than a short one’ is my answer, and a problem which, with a little time and perseverance from reviewers, can be fixed.

The icing on this particular cake is that there would then be space to print the reviews which at present can only be fitted onto the website. But there is another dilemma: the anticipation of theatre critcism in Durham comes from the wrong people. And this is a little harder to resolve, for this paper, anyway.

The quandary is that we go to press once a fortnight, during which time three or four plays will have blazed up on the stage of the Assembly Rooms and disappeared with equal rapidity. Puff. Just like that. By the time the review comes out the situation is this: cast and crew are just desperate to know how well they did, those who saw it might be curious to hear a second opinion, but the majority of people will discard it to the outer recesses of the mind, along with the last essay they wrote. So the people who might read a short review to help them decide whether to see the thing or not are out. Those readers that remain want something wordy, difficult when these three or four shows are all vying equally for a chance of journalistic glory.

Having decided that there’s not a lot that can be done about this, you might think that my opening up the debate to the floor is a bit pointless. I thought so at first, anyway. Earlier I said that the reviews were waited for by the wrong people. I should rephrase that. They are waited for by different people. We aren’t in London, and this isn’t a national paper. So perhaps we should just embrace it as yet another of those quirky Durham bubble things. And anyway, you probably shouldn’t take my opinion too seriously – after all, I am a critic.

From Palatinate, May 2010