Encore Theatre Magazine

6 January 2008

For Shame

What kind of theatre critic has to remind themselves to be open to experiment? What kind of critic is so unaware of how ludicrous this is that they don’t even keep it to themselves? This kind of critic, that’s who.

It’s a hilarious list. He admits to having seen only three movies. Fair enough, he regrets this. But then he pompously adds, ‘I feel particularly ignorant about recent non-Hollywood cinema, especially the exciting work coming out of Iran’. No chum, you’re ignorant about all cinema: you’ve seen three films in a year.

He then successively admits to having seen few art shows, modern dance, and modern fiction. He trots out the nonsensical cliche that you can’t understand Chekhov’s plays without reading his short stories (why?). But since this is part of his proud declaration that he ‘devoured’ Chekhov’s plays in 2007, this means he’s also admitting to not having understood Chekhov’s plays in fifty years of theatregoing.

But it’s his final new year’s resolution that makes us weep with laughter and frustration: ‘Generally, be open to experiment and innovation without succumbing to fashionable trendiness’. As one of the comments points out, unfashionable trendiness would be a curious phenomenon. But let’s notice that this promise means nothing: the critic, he says, has to ‘respond to the shock of the new without lapsing into open-mouthed acceptance of everything that is going’. This is obviously right, but without examining where your boundaries are, all the new year’s resolutions in the world aren’t going to change anything and the Guardian’s leading theatre critic will continue to be a blight on the theatre.

5 Comments currently posted.

Sean says:

Blight on the theatre! You may not agree with him, or even respect him (and I think his knowledge and experience deserves respect), but to say he is a blight is beyond silly. Don’t read the Guardian theatre reviews if he’s that bad, and it’s not as if critics actually have any /much power anymore (in the UK at least).

Hera says:

So how many books have you writen in the last five years? I barely left the house in the five years it took me to write a book. Billington went on reviewing and he’s around 70 years. Get a life of your own and don’t criticise people who actually do a hell of a lot more than most of us.