The thing that I remember most about Rich was how beautifully he could capture a theatrical moment using mere words, so artfully painting the picture -- the feeling, the sound, the visual -- that you felt as if you were there in the theatre experiencing it yourself. It was eloquent, but it was also old-fashined reportage, in the tradition of Brooks Atkinson and Harold Clurman and Elliot Norton of the Boston Globe -- old school newspapermen who earned their stripes as regular reporters writing about fires and robberies and police corruption etc... before they got assigned to the theater beat and discovered that they had a knack for it. They had developed all the basic journalistic skills and knew how to tell the story of any "event" to a reader and they used those same tools to explain in detail not only the facts, but the sensations and visceral details of the theatrical happening that they had just witnessed. They have few present day equivalents.
You also got the sense, from the pains they would often take to explain their reactions to a show, that they really cared about the theatre and the future of the artform. Eliot Norton was famous for tailoring his reviews in the Boston Globe (usually for shows out-of-town trying to "fix" themselves before they got to New York) towards the creative teams. On occasion, he would even actually sit down and have meetings with the directors, playwrights, composers, etc... and give them advice (often heeded) about how to improve their shows. Neil Simon has said that the only time in his long career when a critic actually helped him, was when he was in Boston with "The Odd Couple" and having third act problems. The first two acts were perfect, but the play was dying in the third. He rewrote it every day for every performance and nothing was working. Then Norton's review came out in the Globe in which he said something to the effect that the show was great for two acts, the third act wasn't working, and then asked in his review, "Why not bring back those charming Pigeon sisters for Act Three?" Simon read that, wrote a big third act scene for the Pigeon Sisters and the rest is history.
Rich is another who really went out of his way to champion shows he believed in. For all of the criticism that Rich used to receive about being the "Butcher of Broadway" because a negative review from him had the power in some cases to close a show (not always, as he often pointed out), I'm sure many of those same producers and theatre professionals would love to have him back after all these years of Brantley. I remember during a 60 Minutes profile of him, when asked about the whole "butcher" thing, he said that the only responsibility he felt was to his readers -- that theatre tickets are too expensive and many people relied on him so they could decide whether it was worth plunking down $40 (the top price in those days) for a ticket. His reviews were written so expansively most of the time that you really could decide for yourself whether a show sounded like something that you would enjoy regardless of his ultimate opinion of it. I went to see a few of the shows that he panned, simply because his description of them made them sound so interesting (and I invariably, ended up agreeing with his ultimate assessment that the shows weren't very good).
This current crop of critics, for the most part, seem to care nothing about the artform of theatre. Shows are either all bad or all good with nothing in between. Most distressing is that they are ill-equipped to evaluate what they are looking at, making idiotic proclamations filled with factual errors and a clear lack of understanding regarding the history of theatre and stagecraft -- acting, directing, design, text, music, etc... Present them with a play that isn't wrapped up in a tidy little bow, that is at all challenging or experimental or attempting to perhaps break a bit of new ground, they simply dismiss it, wholecloth, as a failure and not worth anyone's time.
Works before their time have always had this problem. Atkinson said of WAITING FOR GODOT "don't expect this column to explain [it]. It is a mystery wrapped in an enigma." But then the clearly puzzled Mr. Atkinson at least had the where-with-all to continue "But you can expect witness to the strange power this drama has to convey the impression of some of the melancholy truths about the hopeless destiny of the human race." He went on to praise the cast and direction, made some valid interpretational points and then said "theatregoers can rail at it, but they cannot ignore it." Wow, a critic smart enough to recognize the value and importance of a very difficult piece who rather than dismiss it because he can't fully comprehend it in one sitting (totally understandable in 1958, when unlike today, he had an hour or so to make sense of what he had seen and write a review of it), he praised what he could understand and was open enough to give the benefit of the doubt to the rest. That's why they named a theatre after that man (and Walter Kerr; we won't ever see a Ben Brantley or Clive Barnes or John Simon Theatre on Broadway .... or anywhere else for that matter).
Donald Lyon of the Post (who once said something to the effect that he didn't think that Edward Albee had the ability to write about "complex" subject matter) and Margo Jefferson, second-stringer for the Times (whose lukewarm review of the terrific play "Intimate Apparel" is the main reason the show didn't have a longer life in New York -- ridiculously saying that the estimable director Daniel Sullivan "is a mechanical director. His blocking is efficient, never organic, and props are always used predictably") were both "relieved" of their posts recently. I do hope, for all our sakes, that this is the beginning of a trend.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
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