EVERYONE’S A CRITIC

Well, the first reviews of Much Ado are in, and I’d say we’re pretty roundly trashed. Okay, maybe that’s too harsh. Washington’s City Paper has the following to say about my effort: “Overall, he’s not bad.” Woohoo! (Can’t find the reviews online yet. But I’ll post when I do, if you care less.) Of the two reviews I’ve read (the other one was in the local gay paper, MW), the criticism is mainly of the direction. For these two critics, the production isn’t sufficiently light, funny, airy, comedic. Fair enough. But the director wasn’t trying to do that. He was deliberately trying to put on a dark, deconstructed “Much Ado” which emphasizes the nihilistic “nothing” at the heart of the play. City Paper’s Bob Mondello -easily the smarter of the two reviewers – says the “nothing” needs to be “something” to work. Again, fair enough. I can’t disagree with a subjective judgment like that, and I’ve never seen the play as an audience member would. And I’m not the director. Still, I have to say I found the directorial schema really interesting and challenging. If you’re going to do an off-off-off-off-off Broadway show, why go the conventional route? Why not take risks – even moving the audience into three separate spaces, breaking up traditional relationships, adding surrealist touches, new music, video, trap doors, and so on? The risk is that critics will hate it – as some obviously have. But far better to take the risk and lose some more conservative critics, rather than take no risks at all. Moi, je ne regrette rien. Maybe I have a new slogan for the site: “Overall, he’s not bad.” Compared to some of the critics of my writing, that’s almost a rave. And now: another weekend of performances.