Shows to see before you call yourself a critic?

[sn2214]

Posted: 7/14/09 at 12:50pm

I just found this few months old article from Times on another forum and it really made me wonder. In this article, Richard Zoglin admits that he's never seen WSS on stage nor on film until recently. I know that you can't go back to the past and see the original WSS on stage but I've assumed that anyone who call themselves a theater critic would have seen the film version of WSS. So I gotta ask, what do you think are the definitive musicals that you have to see before you call yourself a critic? Or having adequate knowledge of the musical history and being able to reasonably judge/analyze a show enough to qualify?
Is West Side Story Overrated?

[bwayfan7000]

Posted: 7/14/09 at 1:08pm

I think you have to be familiar enough with most of those shows as a point of reference, but you don't have to see all of them.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 7/14/09 at 1:14pm

I don't think that necessarily seeing the film version of a musical is the equivalent of seeing the stage version. Perhaps with WSS (although it seems that lately that movie is everyone's whipping boy), but movies like A Chorus Line, Rent, or even Chicago don't give you a sense of what the stage version is like.