A Who the hell am I? moment

Lynne Patrick

This isn’t an insecure existential (or whatever) crisis about the nature of identity or the meaning of my paltry existence. Typepad won’t let me put italics on the title. It should read Who the hell am I?

So skip the existential bit, and the stuff about identity and existence; the question is, who do I think I am to question someone else’s vision of their own work?

I was at the theatre earlier this week, reviewing a play I’d been looking forward to seeing. It first saw daylight about twenty years ago, and was turned into a hit movie; I’ve seen both the film and the stage version, and greatly enjoyed both. This was a new production, big-budget with a starry name or two – well, maybe not starry, but at least known – and I’d heard good things about it.

Which just goes to show that if you don’t raise your expectations too high, you won’t be disappointed. It had a high spot or two, but mostly it simply didn’t work. It wasn’t so much that they did it badly; more that the approach they’d taken, the concept if you like, didn’t seem to get the play’s message across.

And that’s pretty much what my review said.

It was a touring show, so out of curiosity I looked up reviews at other venues on Google – and give or take a mutter or two about relatively minor details, every one I found sang its praises. A couple even said the setting, which was integral to that concept I couldn’t get along with, was a stroke of genius.

I’ve been reviewing theatre for a long time now, and I stopped being insecure about my own credentials for the job a lot of years ago, even when the critics I’m at odds with are from the big national papers rather than the much smaller regional one I was writing for. A theatre critic is only the man or woman in the stalls, and I’ve seen more than enough live theatre to qualify. Our job is to watch the show from that point of view, and give our readers our opinion; it’s up to them whether they decide to buy a ticket, or not, on the strength of that opinion. Disagreeing with fellow reviewers doesn’t worry me in the least; we’re all individuals who bring our own experience and taste to the job, and there’s no reason on earth why we shouldn’t form different views.

But it didn’t end there. Until I’d written and filed my review, I’d only glanced at the programme (I think American for that is playbill) to check the names of the cast members who weren’t so familiar. When I looked properly, I found that the author, a hugely experienced and respected playwright, was also the director of this particular production – which meant the concept which felt so wrong was actually his idea.

That’s when I had my Who the hell am I? moment.

Had I missed the point? Had I simply failed to latch on to what he was trying to say? And in the light of those other reviews, was I pretty much the only critic in the UK who didn’t get it?

OK, so my own view of how it should be approached chimed with the directors of the movie and the previous stage production I’d seen. But hey, two people among so many; maybe they missed the point as well, and maybe the author wasn’t around to tell them they’d got it wrong.

Or maybe...

Theatre is like reading in many ways; the most significant (and relevant to this post!) is that they’re both two-way processes. What the audience member/reader gets out isn’t necessarily what the author thinks s/he has put in. If that sounds too deep and complex for a damp Wednesday morning in November, I apologize – but it’s really quite simple, and goes back a few paragraphs to where I described reviewers: individuals, who bring our own experience and taste to the job.

To my mind, that description kind of sums up the entire human race.

Which is why that Who the hell am I? moment has passed. Maybe I got it wrong, maybe I just got it... different. I’m only human after all.

Comments

[ABE]

Possibly there's a flaw in the CONCEPT - and the two previous directors saw it and corrected it?

And now the author wants his flaw back? Authors aren't perfect.

If you gave your honest opinion without being snarky about it, that's all you should expect.

I often find that when I see something, and then check the reviews, I find that I side with the much smaller subset of critics who didn't like something, rather than the majority who found everything wonderful.

It's the kind of person I am - it isn't good or bad (except that I'm obviously not the audience they're aiming for).

But, knowing how I think, I now listen very carefully to those who do give an honest opinion - and back it up with reasons: I have only myself to blame if I pay money for something I could have figured out was not for me.

[Roy Innes]

Problem is: reviewers are largely perceived by much of the general public as all-knowing individuals when deciding what is good reading/theatre/music/dance/art material(If they don't like it, I probably won't either sort of thing). And if the reader buys the book or attends the play, etc. despite a negative review, those flaws are in his/her mind like a bad itch.

I'm reminded of a famous short story (author of which I can't remember) in which a beautiful woman in conversation laments on her "awful red hands." Thereafter, her beauty disappears in the eyes of the listener and only those awful red hands command his attention.