Theatre Red

Every artist knows there’s an art to reading reviews.

(Or maybe not an art. Maybe there’s a wine list. Or should be.)

But as a writer about theatre, I have a confession: I enjoy reading reviews of plays after I’ve seen them.

I know this makes nonsense of the idea that reviews are consumer advice. (My attending of theatre is rather like drinking from some random bottle I find under the sink – and then reading the label.)

I avoid reviews before seeing the play because everything feels like a spoiler.

I like to sit down to Hamlet and be surprised. “Oh, it’s in Swahili this time.”

I like to read reviews after I’ve seen the play because I don’t particularly want to know about the play. (I’ve seen it.) I want to know about the reviewer.

Or more precisely, I want to know about another person. I want to know what they value.

Because we do value different things. In aesthetics. In morality. In politics.

There is a danger to living in a pluralistic society that openly acknowledges this: we can forget to be truly amazed at how varied is the human experience. We can reduce the idea we value different things into a mere truism. But each one of us gazes through a different window. To……….. where?  I want a peek.

Reviewers say ‘Have a look through this window.’ And I want to thank them for that.

And to mix imagery, and to return to artists, let me conclude with this:

Putting on a production is like firing up a particle accelerator.  You get a small number of very excited particles and send them hurtling at a larger, more inert mass. Then, after the collision, you know more about the universe.

Veronica Kaye

Note: The image is Paul Gilchrist reading a review to an interested friend.

We have a predilection to judgement. It’s a good thing. It powers our moral life. Only the most naive think that a predetermined set of  rules can guide you through the complexities we face. We constantly have to judge the best course of action.

However, our faculty of judgement is often corrupted. An example of this is when we judge the person not the behaviour.

Is it also possible that it’s a corruption of our faculty of judgement when we apply it to art? I appreciate this is a radical suggestion.

Imagine you were on a panel to determine which theatre maker might receive a $1 million grant. (I’m obviously assuming you have a healthy imagination.) Unless you’re going to pull a name out of a hat, your decision must be based on something. Perhaps you will suggest the grant be given to the artist whose work would most benefit society. (This, of course, would be difficult to determine, but that’s why judgement is a serious matter.) If you choose to give the money in this way you would be making a moral judgement.

However, if you merely attend an evening of theatre and afterwards make a judgement, what is the moral component? I’m not arguing there isn’t one. Perhaps you’ll judge the production to be promoting racism or sexism. Or joy and acceptance. Or you might simply decide it’s presenting an unnecessarily narrow vision of life.

But if you judge the acting to be poor, or the costumes to be garish, what exactly is the moral component?

Well, it might be you who is promoting an unnecessarily narrow vision of life.

Of course, you could counter that I’m ignoring the category of aesthetic judgement altogether, or unfairly collapsing it into a minor subset of ethics.

Perhaps I am.

And perhaps my qualms about the passion sometimes displayed in our aesthetic judgements are indeed misplaced, and we should shout and scream about what happens on our stages, and in our stories, while somewhere else children quietly starve.

Veronica Kaye.