Peter Hall, director
There are plays which I first brought to British audiences that were received
very badly, Waiting for Godot being the best-known example. The public
decided Godot was a sensational thing, not the critics. However, we
shouldn’t deride critics for not being up with tomorrow, because their job
is to record today. Of the critics in my working lifetime – more than 50
years now – The Sunday Times’s Harold Hobson is the one who never missed a
good new writer, which is pretty extraordinary. Kenneth Tynan had a pretty
good record, too, but he wasn’t as good as Hobson at spotting a new talent.
I think critics are better today than when I started: better informed and with
a more international view. None ofus likes being criticised, any more than
we like school reports, but criticism is an essential part of life, and
critics serve the public well. They’re certainly not there for those of us
in the theatre. You don’t read a critic and think “Oh, yes, I should have
done that instead”, but they do help the public and, on the whole, I’m for
them. That doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally write a letter saying “How
dare you!”, but I never post it. There is only a consensus among theatre
critics in the sense that they are living in the same time in the same place
and they’ve seen the same play, but I don’t think that they meet in the
interval to say: “What should we do with this one?” I’m not worried that
some of them have been in their posts for a while: there are quite a lot of
young people coming up. And, from the heights of being 76, I see nothing
wrong with being old, except that people will say you’re old.
Thelma Holt, producer
When critics are doing their job properly, then the people who stand to
benefit the most are audiences, but a well-written review benefits everyone
involved. I don’t like it when they single some poor actor out and make it
personal, but I suppose that makes for good copy, and actors have to learn
that negative reviews are an occupational hazard. But the reviews don’t
count for everything. I’m now producing Kean in the West End, starring
Antony Sher and directed by Adrian Noble. The reviews were patchy, but the
applause is enthusiastic, and positive word of mouth has an effect. I work
internationally, and it’s good that we have a plurality of voices here. Our
situation is better than on Broadway, where it is only The New York Times
that has any influence.
David Johnson, producer
We are well served by critics 80% of the time. There have certainly been times
when I’ve had an easier ride with a production than I deserved. Equally,
there are reviews that niggle, when you feel someone hasn’t understood the
production. In November, Mark Shenton, who writes an influential blog for
The Stage, suggested the critics must be on Prozac because they kept giving
musicals an easy time while being harder on serious theatre. I do wonder if,
in their effort to be populist and not seem out of touch, they’ve not been
critical enough about some fairly second-rate productions. That wouldn’t
have happened when, say, the late Jack Tinker was at the Daily Mail. He was
a brave critic who felt it was his duty to take his audience to venues they
had never been to before if the work was worth it. But my main concerns for
the theatre are how expensive it has become and how difficult it is to stage
serious theatre in the West End.
David Babani, artistic director, Menier Chocolate Factory
Critics are a really important part of the industry. My main bugbear, as
someone with a fringe venue trying to produce new work, is with the editors
who allocate space and decide certain productions are not worth reviewing.
We have had a couple of hit productions that – on the back of rave reviews
and sellout audiences – have transferred to the West End, but our latest
show, which opened in a very busy week, was barely reviewed, and that has
made it a real struggle. For me, though, criticism should be all about the
critic’s penmanship. If AA Gill writes a review, then it is worth reading
because of his writing. With some of the newer critics, I do worry sometimes
that they aren’t actually that keen on theatre, or don’t really understand
it. Without naming any names, I was once surprised to express an opinion to
a critic about a production during a play’s interval, then to see it in
print the following day.
Compiled by Patricia Nicol
The critics v difficult new plays
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, 1955
“Twaddle.” Bernard Levin
“The language is flat and feeble.” Philip Hope-Wallace, The
Guardian
“Go and see Waiting for Godot. At the worst you will discover a curiosity, a
four-leaved clover, a black tulip; at the best something that will securely
lodge in a corner of your mind for as long as you live.” Harold
Hobson, The Sunday Times, in a review that changed its fortunes and gave
the production an audience.
John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, 1956
...consists largely of tirades. The hero regards himself, and clearly is
regarded by the author, as the spokesman for the younger generation which
looks round at the world and clearly finds nothing right with it.” The
Times
“[Jimmy Porter], perhaps, should have gone to a psychiatrist rather than a
dramatist – not at any rate to one writing a first play.” Patrick
Gibbs, The Daily Telegraph “.
“I doubt if I could love anyonewho did not wish to see Look Back in Anger.” Kenneth
Tynan, The Observer
John Osborne is a writer of outstanding promise.” Harold Hobson,
The Sunday Times
Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, 1958, closed after only one week’s
performance
“This sort of drama is all very well if the writer is able to create
theatrical effects out of his symbolic dialogue. Mr Harold Pinter’s effects
are neither comic nor terrifying: they are never more than puzzling, and
after a little while we tend to give up the puzzle in despair.” The
Times
“What it all means only Mr Pinter knows.” The Guardian
“I am willing to risk whatever reputation I have as a judge of plays by saying
that Mr Pinter, on the evidence of this work, possesses the most original,
disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London.” Harold Hobson,
The Sunday Times
Sarah Kane’s Blasted, 1995
“Finally I have been driven into the arms of Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. For
utterly and entirely disgusted I was by a play which appears to know no
bounds of decency, yet has no message to convey by way of excuse.” Jack
Tinker, Daily Mail
“You would need to be deaf, dumb and blind not to be disturbed by it.” Charles
Spencer, The Daily Telegraph
“.. . an unpleasant play, full of sick violence and sexual outrage, but it has
integrity. We need these moral ordeals even if we have to pay for them;
indeed, perhaps we take them more seriously if we do. One way or another,
the theatre is only alive if it is kicking.” John Peter, The
Sunday Times
