Letter: Theater reviews are unfair, unhelpful
Letter: Theater reviews are unfair, unhelpful
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Two weeks ago, a three-person play called “Faith Healer” was performed as a Theater Studies senior project. There are only three people in the entire play, and each of them spend at least half an hour alone on stage. There is practically no set, minimal production values, no group dynamics — there is nothing in the play to comment on besides the acting performances of its three cast members. It is astonishing, then, that the News’ review of this play (“O come all ye ‘Faith’-ful,” Oct. 31) failed to mention one of the actors altogether.
The acting of Bobby Allen, performing the title role with the most onstage time of the three, was ignored, while comment on the other two actors was limited to one-sentence assessments of their accents and monologue lengths. The author, Luis Santoyo-Meija, managed to find something to say about everything that didn’t matter — a back-of-the-book plot summary, a list of regional accents used, the number of seats in the audience — and absolutely nothing about what did matter.
The review was useless. Senior projects are meant to display a culmination of four years of performance work; to ignore the performances and spend a paragraph analyzing the use of a paper banner on the wall is misguided, to say the least.
Similar mistakes were made in this past Friday’s review of the The Fully Monty (“ ‘Monty,’ flaccid, still somehow performs,” Nov. 14). It seems snarkiness has become the mantra of the theater review staff — a bad orchestra-amplification system is mentioned, but the star performances are not. Performances by Brennan Caldwell ‘11 (almost begrudgingly acknowledged in one half-sentence of the review), Hannah Corrigan ‘09, Chaka Jaliwa ‘10, Gabriel Sloyer ‘09 and Marshall Pailet ‘09 (all entirely absent from the review) were stellar — the kind of performances that are important to notice because they are of unusual caliber. In an 800-word review that is full of miscellaneous griping, the total lack of attention they receive is absurd.
I don’t understand what the News’ theater reviewers are trying to do. Why do we read theater reviews? To decide whether or not to go to the show? That can’t be all of it, because “The Fully Monty” house was packed Saturday night despite the negative review. The reader must be looking for discourse. Reviews should acknowledge the great performances of plays so that other actors can look for good examples, and so that the theatergoing student body can gain some insight into what makes certain stage-work successful.
Discuss the problems of plays so that they don’t happen again. Blame shows for creative laziness, or for unfulfilled potential, but don’t take cheap swings. Reviews should be critical — we want them to be critical — but also productive.
Reviewers may think that they’re gaining some sort of street cred for being tough cookies, but it’s backfiring: News theater reviews are being dismissed as stupid, mean and wrong. I look forward to a review that merits a good review itself.
Becky Dinerstein
The writer is a senior in Berkeley College.
Comments
None 3 years, 6 months ago
While Dinerstein makes good points about the poor quality of two YDN reviews (apparently the only two she has read), she falls into the very trap she sets by ignoring the stellar and interesting reviews I've read in the YDN recently. Like these: http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/26171 and http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/26339 and http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/26517.
I advise Ms. Dinerstein to consider her own tendency to make sweeping generalizations based on a couple of bad apples. It happens. Smart people are more likely to focus on the flaws of a production when they are asked to evaluate it.
I look forwarding to reading a letter to the editor that does more than just complain. I'd even look forward to reading a review written by Dinerstein herself.
None 3 years, 6 months ago
Street cred?
None 3 years, 6 months ago
"Smart people are more likely to focus on the flaws of a production when they are asked to evaluate it."
There's a difference between being smart, and being on a mission to show how smart you are. The latter doesn't mean you're not smart per se...but being intelligent doesn't necessarily require being hypercritical.
None 3 years, 6 months ago
Agreed. The theater reviews are often embarrassingly condescending and nitpicky.
None 3 years, 6 months ago
eh...the jannise review stylistically beats you a little over the head with the brechtian business.
i enjoyed reading the monty review, and don't think you can really compare it to the faith healer review.
None 3 years, 6 months ago
One defense of the articles Becky cites (not the strongest) might be that, like the students who make up these productions, the News' writers are still learning their craft. As two quick clicks to the maligned reviewers' YDN bios revealed, neither had seen a theater review published before, and Luis has already improved significantly with reviews two and three. Even given her targets’ inexperience, however, Becky’s criticism is hilariously misguided.
I might question the editor's choice of Fuhrer to review the season's marquee Dramat show, especially a uniquely controversial one, but both Zack and Luis did what they were supposed to do: They provided the broader community with a reasonably good idea of what to expect from each show. That is and should be the goal of a theater review, not a parade of "constructive criticism” for the actors; that’s what, presumably, their directors, professors and friends are for. Like professional theater reviews, those in the News should only focus on individual actors to the extent that their performances enhance or detract from the overall experience (presumably the senior actors will be graded on their projects by their graders), and the same goes for music, lighting, direction, the quality of the source material etc. The review as a whole should only focus exclusively on the acting if the acting singularly defines the individual production (a completely vanilla production of “Hamlet,” for example) and thus the theatergoing experience.
Ironically, YDN theater reviews have historically shied away from the type of commentary Becky seems to want precisely because of histrionics from people like Becky. Like us writers, the minority who anxiously read theater reviews are hypersensitive and impossible to please. I’m glad their temper tantrums aren’t on my radar anymore, but I admit I’d take some perverse joy in it if the News were to give Becky what she thinks she wants.
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