Legendary arts critic Clive Barnes has died — Page 2

Oddly enough, his rave for Catered Affair failed to recognize Bucchino's songs and seemed to give most of the musical credit to Jonathan Tunkick. That was rather unfortunate.

A part of theatre history is gone. Like him or not, agree with him or not ... he was a legendary theatre critic and will be remembered as such. RIP.

Get over it jv92. He will be greatly missed.

Barnes was bitchy in the 60s and 70s because as the chief critic for the Times, he could be.

"Legendary"? Since when?

When Rupert Murdoch at the Post gave him a heap of money and also gave him his job of chief drama critic back (the Times had 'demoted' him to just chief dance critic) as well as chief dance critic, the quality of his work began a long slow slide.

He was grossly overweight, had a rep for drinking and also for sleeping.

And this has been my personal curiousity for about 20 years: could Barnes be bought? I mean quite literally, with money or more likely the promise of a big ad in the Post in exchange for a favorable quotable review?

I know I am not alone thinking along these lines.

Barnes devolved into a slob.

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Was Clive Barnes a drinker? Are you KIDDING? Now that he's dead and gone, the REAL reason for his dismissal -- is being sugar-coated. Wihout going into the gory details, he was fired because he reviewed a ballet performance that never had taken place. Totally unprofessional and vicious, to the bitter end. Sorry for his family, but defintely NOT sorry that such a malign influence is no longer around to spew his ignorant venom on the theatre. I know this isn't a popular opinion to be saying at this point, but facts are facts and reality is reality. Go ahead and shoot, but the guy was a drunken louse.

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to clarify:

there are actually different kinds of liver cancer.

drinking can predispose you to the most common kind, hepatoma/hepatocellular carcinoma, as well as causing cirrhosis. cirrhosis itself also predisposes you to hepatoma/hepatocellular carcinoma.

to be back on topic, i thought it was customary to at least be respectful of the dead.

RIP Mr. Barnes.

No, I meant it as a serious insult.

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Read William Goldman's appraisal of Barnes in THE SEASON. It isn't pretty. "I think Clive Barnes is the most dangerous, the most crippling critic in modern Broadway history and I only hope he is dispensed with before these words reach print."

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Updated On: 11/19/08 at 03:28 PM

My first Broadway obsession was Pacific Overtures. The double whammy of dual pans from Barnes and Walter Kerr insured that the show wouldn't get a run.

But out of nowhere, just several months after it opened, and weeks before it closed, Barnes did a complete turn-around.

He re-reviewd the show, saying it was brilliant! OK, perhaps revisiting a work a decade or two later and revising an opinion is acceptable. But for the most important critic in NY to dismiss a show in January of 2006, and then somehow decide it's wondeful in June is just irresponsible. He effectively killed the show, then went on record saying he wasn't the one responsible for the death.

It was a stupid and lazy move. Of course he had also panned Follies and Company. The Times, and Barnes were supremely powerful back then. To be honest much of what he wrote was haphazzard and without a rigorous critical sensibility.

I find it interesting that the first posting of the NYTimes obit had "dance critic" in its headline (it now just says "critic"). The obit stressed his contributions to dance criticism, and made his theater-criticism work seem more like an afterthought.

(...which is just to say that I'm paraphrasing William Goldman, 40 years later.)