After Eight, thanks for the response to my post. I won't speak for others, but I don't read reviews in detail before seeing a show. I may read the first and/or last paragraph. I do usually get a general sense of the critical response. But, as I wrote before, my opinion often goes against the prevailing winds.
I've been criticized here for having problems with Once (the first act) and Other Desert Cities (the end), and especially for liking The Burning and parts of Cry Baby (the choreography).
I agree that people are impressionable. It's difficult not to be influenced by others. But once a show has received Isherwood-style kudos, are the only honest views those like yours that disagree? Every day, people here post disdain for Sunday in the Park and other acclaimed shows. Are they the only ones who can feel they truly own their own opinion?
April I'm very interested in your comment "...at the talkback I saw, she and Gold seemed a bit too cavalier about audience discomfort." Can you elaborate? I have appreciated every one of the Annie Baker/Sam Gold collaborations that I've seen; I think they are both great theater artists, as I said in my review of The Flick. But in the last two works of theirs I've seen -- their adaptation of "Uncle Vanya" and now "The Flick" -- I thought I detected a growing indifference to the audience that bordered on contempt. In Vanya, it was not just the length, but the lighting and the uncomfortable seating. I wrote at the time: "The actors are playing characters who sulk, whine, and shuffle around as if their life has lost meaning for nearly three hours, sometimes in near-darkness, alleviated only occasionally by some nice singing and guitar-playing. Chekhov’s much-vaunted comedy largely gets lost with this treatment, especially when audience members’ attention focuses increasingly not on the characters’ misery but on their own discomfort. It is hard to focus fully on the bleakness of wasted lives when trying to keep one’s own legs from falling asleep."
Hey NYTheater--It wasn't that blatant, but I felt like there was some condescension there. I was ushering for a preview and before Flick started, complimented Annie Baker on other plays of hers; when I mentioned how long this one was, she just kind of shrugged and laughed. Then at the talkback--and by then, there'd been a couple of dozen walkouts, one of them an angry patron who was complaining loudly in the lobby--the very first person to ask a question begged Baker and Gold to shorten the production. Baker simply replied that many people had told her not to cut a single word and moved on to other things.
My impression was that they didn't take it seriously; and maybe it wasn't realistic to expect them to do any soul-searching on that score, especially in front of an audience. But at that point, I left the talkback in frustration, because I'd been there for hours and I didn't get the sense that they really cared what I thought of their play anyway.
This was before I read the comment she made that was mentioned earlier in this thread: "That we look to the contemporary art world and figure out why little old ladies are willing to go to the museums and stare at obscene paintings and abstract light installations and feel okay with the shock of the new (is it because there are plaques on the wall explaining things? and audio tour guides?), but then when the very same little old ladies go to the theater they freak out if a silence lasts more than two seconds."
"But once a show has received Isherwood-style kudos, are the only honest views those like yours that disagree?"
Chris,
Not wishing to drag this thing out, but since you asked me a direct question, I'll give you a direct answer, which is, I can't give you a direct answer. The reason is, in my previous response to you, I asked you questions about how one could define the very notion of "honesty" itself once the hype machine puts the onus on the patron instead of the play. If one were to react to a show by saying, "this is garbage," before the hype, and then say "well, it really wasn't my cup of tea," after, one could claim to be "honest" in both responses, but even in that difference in phrasing, a change has taken place. But I can't tell you how great a change there would be, and for whom, and in what instance.
NY Theatre,
I'm not answering for April, and did not attend the talkback that she did, but apropos of your remark, "a growing indifference to the audience that bordered on contempt," did you read the interview I linked with Baker's comments on "little old ladies," and "rich white old geezers?" It seems to me her contempt went substantially beyond the border there.
