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Thursday, 19 June 2008
Jana P, a Melbourne-based writer who maintains the blog mono no
aware, posts today on the quality of London theatre criticism,
taking recent critical reactions to Anthony Nielson's Relocated, at the Royal Court through 5 July,
as her text.
After considering both the positive and negative reviews of the show,
Jana remains dissatisfied. She writes:
[Even the positive reviews are] commendable, yet inadequate. For here
we have all the usual ails: the need to assess as good or bad, the
need to decipher the theme, the meaning, the purpose of the exercise, and
an idea of art as a polemic, rather than what Susan Sontag called a
thing in the world, something to sensually experience, appreciate for
its own sake.
Going on, Jana also quotes from a recent post on Andrew Haydon's blog, in which Andrew goes
into somewhat more detail about the qualities that British critical
culture, at least as that which takes theatre as its subject, currently
displays:
In many ways, partly because of this lack of a serious intellectual
culture in British public life, having a more creative, interpretative
critical culture wouldn't make much sense as there simply aren't that many
plays being produced that would benefit from such rigours being applied to
them. While say Martin Crimp and Howard Barker might enjoy such a regime
change, current critical favourites from Alan Bennett to Roy Williams
would find themselves left a bit out in the cold. The fact of the matter
is, not much British theatre is actually very arty. It wears its messages
and meanings plastered all over its sleeves and generally prefers to offer
stories that anyone can readily understand with messages that it would
take serious concentration to overlook. I generalise, but not by much. At
the same time, this divergence of critical thought does explain why both
Crimp and Barker, not to mention Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, receive so
much warmer receptions on mainland Europe than in Britain. It also
provides the answer as to why so many normally intelligent, thoughtful
British critics treat work by some of Europe’s more successful but
idiosyncratic directors as if it is something to be debunked and
dismissed.
Time doesn't permit me to apply Jana's and Andrew's assessments to
current American critical culture.
So long as Lyn Gardner is offering modest proposals to place a moratorium on new
productions of plays by Shakespeare, perhaps it's an interesting thought
experiment to consider one more. Given the place of the reviewing and
critical community in the post-capitalist ideology that
maintains journalists, the business community and artists as
closely-aligned participants in the discipline, maybe we should
place a moratorium on criticism and reviewing as well. So long as we might
think about "giving Shakespeare a rest," as Lyn puts it, perhaps our
critics and reviewers could also use some time away from the theatre.
Let's give the reviewers and theatre editors for the New York
Times, Time Out New York, Backstage, the Guardian
and
nytheatre.com a paid one-year vacation and see what
transpires.
Of course there are a number of reasons why this remains a
thought-experiment; certainly the theatrical blogosphere is not
mature enough, nor is it on the radars of enough theatregoers, to take the
place of print criticism. But there are many self-evident reasons
(they're evident to writers like Jana and Andrew, anyway, and perhaps to
Nielson, Crimp and Barker as well) to believe that work which undermines
and questions contemporary cultural ideology would be presented to working
critics whose perspectives, professional interests and ideological
prejudices do not permit the attention and mature consideration that this
work may deserve. The other alternative, and perhaps more practical, is
not to admit reviewers into one's productions, not out of fear but out of
an appropriate mistrust of the bad faith that the critics' and reviewers'
own public
writings and
comments demonstrate. Ultimately this means that productions would need to
live out the length of their runs with neither positive nor negative
reviews, and the lack of publicity which accords to them. It may be,
though, an acceptable trade-off, and allow audiences to receive this
work with neither preconception nor a prejudice formed by a critic. As Sir Humphrey Appleby might well put it, however, this
would be the most courageous thing that theatre has ever done, with
undoubtedly dire consequences. Though I wonder for whom those consequences
would be most dire.
Jana's entire post, once again, is here.
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