#26
Posted: 8/11/17 at 2:56pm
Boosterism, to borrow the term LarryD2 used earlier in this thread, is a major problem in regional theater criticism. And since DC, Chicago, and LA/Southern California have become the major spots for pre-Broadway engagements these days, their chief critics (Marks, McNulty, and Chris Jones) engage in it regularly. Having shows transfer from their cities to Broadway not only makes them look influential, but makes their cities look like viable tryout spots for future musicals and (rarely) plays. Anything with even the whiff of transfer possibility often gets a fawning, uncritical review that makes it sound like the next Hamilton or Dear Evan Hansen.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Updated On: 8/11/17 at 02:56 PM
