He's got a good pair of talents tucked in there...

very_fit_attractive_man_wearing_underwear_
and_a_lifting_his_tank_top_revealing_
his_abdominal_muscles

Right, troops, Mad Cyril here. I stumbled across a debate about whether theatre critics 'ought' to comment on the physical attractiveness of performers. To my credit, I read at least three comments on it before I threw a dustbin through the window of a bookies.

It's such a feeble discussion. Criticism is dying, seriously choking on a mix of second-hand Tynan pomposity and the dwindling respect it is given by newspapers, and the ponderings are at the level of a sixth form school debate championship. When Mark Fisher says 'the answer is yes and no,' he says everything that needs to be said. Sometimes it is okay, like when I intimated that I wanted to have sex with an act doing a nun striptease at Gypsy Charm's Illicit Thrill, and sometimes not, like the critic who commented on the sexual attractiveness of a woman in Nic Green's Trilogy (which was concerned with examining the theatrical meaning of female nudity, amongst other things).

I hate the idea that criticism is instinctual, but a critic who has any working philosophy of their work will know when it is acceptable. Personally, I try to remember that, after all, there are usually real human beings on stage, and I would no more personally insult or inappropriately compliment them than I would if I met them in the street. 

That's why my reviews tend to talk about their performance or their writing rather than them as people. 

That said, this would be more interestingly debated in the on-going activity of critical writing. Critics do need to be called more often when they step over boundaries - not in back-stage cabals of frustrated artists, but publicly by the artists in question. I have standards that I invariably fail to hold... it would be nice if someone engaged with me when I overdo it. 

Obviously in a polite tone, unlike the raging half-wittery on display in this post.