BY BEN WINTERS
There is nothing more infuriating–ok, peevish–as a theatre critic on the warpath. Richard Ouzounian, who writes for the Toronto Star–and is probably the most powerful theatre critic in Canada–spent over 800 words on Oct. 9 exorcising his disapproval of theatrical marketers who take his precious words out of context.
"There are times when I see a banner headline announcing 'Extraordinary!–Richard Ouzounian, The Toronto Star’ about a play that I thought was anything but," he writes. "A look at my original review confirms I may have said something like 'this makes for an evening of extraordinary boredom’ and some enterprising publicist has chosen to pluck a line out of context."
Come on, Richard, don’t exaggerate.
"You think I’m exaggerating? Not really," the article continues. "This is on my mind thanks to an ad that CanStage ran in yesterday’s papers to trumpet its current show–Proof." The offending advertisement, Ouzounian asserts, took an original line from his review ("If you’re anxious to learn why David Auburn’s Proof is such a prize-winning triumph, you won’t necessarily find the answer in the CanStage production.") and bent it over backwards to find a tagline: "a prize-winning triumph."
And they say creativity in the theatre is dead! Ouzounian gives up one more galling example: "CBC Radio’s Lynn Slotkin heartily disliked last year’s CanStage production of The Lost Boys for its excesses, and to prove her point, cited the only quiet two-minute passage in the show as 'absolutely mesmerizing.’ Guess what quote wound up in the newspaper ads?"
(CanStage, based in Toronto, is Canada’s largest not-for-profit theatre, with an annual budget of approximately $8 million Canadian. They do the standard regional theatre mix of experiments and sure things: This year, besides Proof, they’ve got a little Neil LaBute, a little Rebecca Gilman, a little Steve Sondheim, and a couple things by Canadian playwrights).
ArtsLine has discussed the pseudo-quoting issue with theatre critics, and most simply accept it as part of the game. It’s the flipside of the phenomenon wherein critics pen particularly "quote-worthy" little nuggets to increase their chances of getting name-dropped in advertisements: the dreaded Gene Shalit Syndrome.
Cut It Out Already
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While Ouzounian was waxing annoyed at the perversion of his words, Washington Post critic Peter Marks was trying to rid his home town of a lingering unpleasantness: a play called Shear Madness, which has enjoyed a spectacularly long run at the Kennedy Center.
"The interactive murder mystery, set in a Georgetown beauty parlor, is not so much a whodunnit as a howtheydunit. How has this vacuous show managed to hang on for so long–and at the culturally ambitious Kennedy Center, no less?," writes Marks. "How has a mechanical comedy featuring a gallery of obvious stereotypes and a bottomless barrel of bad jokes found success in the nation’s capital for 15 interminable years?"
Anyone who has seen Shear Madness in any of its many incarnations (it has played in cities all over the country, including a 20-year-and-no-end-in-sight run in Boston) knows that Marks is right. Madness is cheesy, campy fun, but without even rising to the level of quality cheesy, campy fun. And yet, as Marks continues in his piece, "Congressional careers tumble, administrations founder, even empires fall. Yet Shear Madness breathes on, like some creature from the deep that no dosage of secret formula can kill."
Theatre critics love it when they get to use phrases like that. Marks also derides the show for using "the sort of gags that went out with ’70s reruns, as in mistaking the word 'Lebanese’ for 'lesbian.’" But the writer’s real beef, it seems, isn’t with the stupid play –stupid, and somehow the third-longest play in the country, after Les Mis and, er, the Boston version of Shear Madness–but with the supposed-to-be-smart Kennedy Center:
"Why would one of the world’s premier showcases for theatre tie up one of its stages for a decade and a half with any play, let alone one so inconsequential?…there is something strange about cementing a production in place forever in a space called the Theatre Lab, a name that suggests a haven for novel work. And something dispiriting about an institution of such potentially thrilling impact–witness the wide acclaim for the recent Sondheim Celebration–sheltering such a second-rate enterprise for so long. A theatre, after all, is a terrible thing to waste."
The Ever-Evolving NEA
The problem with changes at the NEA is that no one pays attention to changes in the NEA until it’s too late. Robin Pogrebin, culture reporter at the New York Times, is paying attention, and filed a report on Oct. 4 under the headline "A New Shake-up at the National Endowment for the Arts." That shake-up is described by Pogrebin as "quiet but significant" and "has led some arts advocates to conclude that federal financing is about to shift even further toward traditional cultural organizations like large museums and classical music ensembles. This would move the agency in a direction long favored by conservatives inside and outside the Bush administration."
People get up in arms when the NEA budget is threatened, and that’s not happening this year. Indeed, the organization’s budget will most likely have an unprecedented rise this legislative season. The change is more insidious: It "centers on a diminution in status for the program directors in charge of the agency’s 13 discipline areas, like literature, dance and folk arts." Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but as Pogrebin notes, "The program directors are widely considered the creative hearts of the agency, representatives of arts specialties nationwide who also recommend those who serve on the peer review panels that select grant recipients."
After the requisite quotes for and against the move ("They are trying to anesthetize…this agency…" versus "It’s about trying to be more efficient"), Pogrebin points out what’s especially unsettling: appointed NEA chair Michael Hammond died, after a week in office, in January; these changes are coming under the acting chairman, who was not approved by Congress.