Status Anxiety

8 March 2008

Now I can't even claim that my play was panned by the press because I was a critic

It was the same story in every paper. A rave in the Telegraph, four stars in the Times and in the Independent. It didn’t get a single bad review. As if to add insult to injury, a few days later I received a Facebook message from the Finborough informing me that this was my last chance to buy tickets to the play. Apparently every performance had sold out, with the exception of 16 March, 21 March and a matinee on 22 March. A West End transfer looks inevitable.

The most depressing thing about this is it gives the lie to the excuse Lloyd and I came up with at the time to account for all our bad reviews. We told ourselves we were never going to get a fair hearing from our colleagues. Of course they would slag it off. They simply couldn’t bear the idea that we had the temerity to write a play. If it was possible to be both a critic and a playwright, they would have done it ages ago. Here was proof, if any were needed, that it is impossible to ride both horses.

Unfortunately, that explanation will no longer wash. Following the reception given to Jongh, it is clear our colleagues are more than willing to give a fellow critic the thumbs-up, if only he or she writes a decent play. In other words, we’ve been forced to confront the possibility that the reason A Right Royal Farce was universally panned is because it wasn’t any good. Will you now go back to your day job, please, Nicholas? You’re making life for the rest of us critics-cum-playwrights extremely difficult.

Previous page 1 | 2

More articles from: Toby Young | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (1)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Asad Siddiqi

March 10th, 2008 5:46am Report this comment

One would have thought theater critics would be the best dramatists but on second thought that is like saying that demolition experts would make the best architects.

Post comment