Are You Calling Me Soft?

Over at The Guardian, Lyn Gardner has got a new idea. I would say something about how it seems to take a

trip to Scotland for English critics to get new material, but since I copy most of my Big Concepts from them, I can't. I might even add a general disparaging remark about The Guardian's liberalism - although I'll have to see whether that fits in with my theme.

The original post that had me fuming was a suggestion that Scottish critics were 'soft' on Scottish work. Apart from revealing her lack of knowledge of Glasgow vernacular (on the West Coast, calling someone soft translates as 'I would like to engage you in a duel of fisticuffs to protect my impugned honour'), her conclusions are rightly corrected by various responses on the site. The slightly patronising tone suggests that it is 'nice' for the locals to have critics who understand their work - no doubt performed in a dialect, and about issues that only matter north of the border, like poverty and social exclusion.

Knowing most of the critics that Gardner alludes to, I doubt 'soft' is quite the right word for them. As a group, Scottish critics are pugnacious, and have distinctive tastes to the point that finding any other adjective that fits all of them is difficult. Admittedly, the size of Scotland's theatre community ensures that every critic's profile is well known, which has the advantage of allowing the artists and audience to put a review in  a wider context. But the Scottish critics have demonstrated, in their reviews of the EIF's Leaving Planet Earth, that they rarely speak with a single voice.

I actually take offence at the idea of 'Scottish critics': nothing links us except our nationality, which, like gender or race or religion, doesn't shed much light on the individual's identity. I'm reading Nick Cohen again, and somewhere in his arguments against liberalism, he points out that the kind of thinking that groups people by national identity is either patronising or racist. I might not go that far - not least because Cohen's latest book is all about how the libel laws in  the UK are easily marshalled. But I don't think that grouping critics is helpful.

This also plugs into the debate about star rating...

Unfortunately, I can't discuss that because I died of boredom typing the words.

Anyway, all these things fail to recognise that criticism is subjective. It's part of a dialogue... while I usually like a bit of banter on this, I am going to move on: the job of the critic is to talk about theatre, not get too self-referential about their process.

Insert appropriate ironic exclamation at the audacity of that statement on this blog...