The camera in the mind's eye never gets a hair in the lens.

Over on Facebook, the charming Gemma Hirst asked an innocent question.

Is it possible for a theatre reviewer to be involved in the theatre as an actor as well?

The charmless answer I left in the comments - absolutely not - needs some clarification, not least because I appear to have been very rude. But it is a question that has formed a great deal of my policy as an editor, from my days at The Skinny through to my exciting career as an all-round media node.

Before I launch into the Big Rant, a few qualifiers. First of all, the word actor can be replaced by dramaturg, director, producer, stage-hand  or any other active role in a professional theatre company.

Then there's the question of objectivity. I don't believe it exists (and, a bit like my mum when I swore in an argument, immediately discount any argument that uses it). It is not the case that a performer is any less subjective than a critic. 

Finally, I am not discounting the validity or importance of the voice of the actor: it is a fascinating and valuable addition to the discussion of theatre. It is the specific area of the review that is under consideration - an activity performed by journalists, reviewers and critics. At another time, I might discuss the difference between them.

There is a period of time when an individual can be both theatre-maker and critic - the early years of their career. At some point - a mysterious one, but hopefully one that a conscientious editor can support - the individual slips into one of the two camps, and any crossover needs to be carefully monitored.

And so, rant-fans, here we go.

If objectivity is rejected, a multiplicity of subjectivities replace it. While there is no hierarchy of subjectivities in my argument - I am not saying one way of seeing is better than another - different subjectivities filter experience in diverse ways.

A critic (we'll be dealing with the critic rather than other people who write reviews) has a specific way of interpreting theatre. It's not entirely possible to make a generalisation about what that specific way is, as it will differ between critics (or in my case, whether I am pretending to be Gareth K Vile or Mad Cyril).

A theatre-maker will have a different approach to interpretation (see above for a qualifying ramble). These perceptions of theatre are both crucial.

The nub is that the theatre-maker, the actor, if they are engaged to any serious degree in their own process, will primarily observe a production in the light of their profession. If they are any good, they'll be asking something like the following question:

If I had the same budget, and the same intention, how would I have presented this work?

Potentially, the actor is not just watching the action on stage: they are also following their own version, going on in their head, without the friction of the physical world. It will be perfect, and the act of watching will not be based on generosity...

The camera in the mind's eye never gets a hair in the lens.

A critic, hopefully, will have a different question:

What is this work trying to do, and how well does it do it?

Again, this does not mean that the critic has a better opinion, just one that works better for reviewing purposes. In fact, the theatre-makers' interpretation is a crucial part of their creative process. And that opinion is well worth reading - but is not a good foundation for a review.

Add in the possibility of conflicted interest - is it likely that the actor might have some advantage in undermining a production or performer? - or just the general problem of not upsetting your colleagues (seriously, I am lovely most of the time, but I get hate-mail), and the actor is a bad bet as a critic.

Counter-arguments abound (like needing to know about the experience of performing, but there are ways around that), but, frankly, there's not enough work for critics without letting actors in on the rich pickings.

(Of course, my own artistic presentations make me a hypocrite. Over to the internet...)

Hello Rupert! Why do you think you are the Queen?

Y'all know how I loves me some generalisation, so thank you Andrew Haydon for bringing this cheeky whopper to my attention. 

Sure, it's from The Telegraph, so I can't be expected to agree with Rupert C (but he sure is cute). It kinda feels upside down to me, that coming at a play with the assumption that 'updating' is a bad idea. But he goes on to give specific examples of how Man and Superman sucks a big one because of the interpretation.

Imma go ahead and say 'fair play': anyone who avoids the whole 'plays have universal values' spiel is alright by me. And I never got on so well with JB Shaw, anyway. He was interested in the immediacy of his plays, not their continued relevance. He wanted social change, and he sorta got it. The irrelevance mentioned here is the consequence of campaigning JBS would've loved.

But here's where I get kinda pissed.

So, I'd like a few examples of Julius Caesar as commentary on totalitarianism from the 1920s, but okay. It's the assumption that it is 'fashionable orthodoxy... patronises it audience...craven anxiety' behind it all. 

Y'see, what Rupert's doing is taking one example of updating and using it to weave a vision of contemporary British theatre - a world of patronising, paranoid creators, desperate to be down with the kids.

Here's some more...

This sort of thinking is confined to the theatre: television almost invariably adheres to the original period... and although classics have occasionally been re-framed for the cinema (one thinks of the brilliant Clueless, so imaginatively drawn from Jane Austen’s Emma), the movies have become ever more meticulous in their recreation of the past – Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner being two recent outstanding examples.

Ah. There it is. The word that brings out my inner knife-fighter. 'One thinks,' does one? It's the use of 'one' that reveals a critic's self-image. He's sitting in a leather-bound armchair, surrounded by books he has no need to read, darling, because he just knows, off the top of his head, that what he says is correct. 'One' makes his readers complicit in his vanity, obscuring the subjectivity of opinion, making his opinion into 'a fact readily accepted by all reasonable people.'

It's a shame, because this bit makes a good point.

Significantly, it is when confronted with opera, the least naturalistic of art forms, that directors become almost hysterically insistent on nowness, however absurd that leaves fundamental premises of the story. Put La Bohème into the era of the Welfare State and it is inconceivable that Mimi would have been denied hospital care for her terminal illness; take Le Nozze di Figaro beyond the 18th century and the idea on which the opera hinges – the Count pulling rank to justify taking Susanna’s virginity – falls apart; make La Traviata’s heroine Violetta a Tatler party-girl and the poignancy of her self-sacrifice has no moral foundation.

That's enough from me: I am going to find a brick to wrap this blog-post on and throw it through the stained-glassed windows of The Telegraph's Art Castle, metaphorically. I suppose I could conclude that this is exactly what criticism should not be, but I can  never be that dogmatic. He makes some good points - which I'll return to when I get over my temper - about relevance, and spoils it with pomposity and weight of learning (overdoing the examples, much?). But it triggered a debate, so I'll let him live. 

Encouraging discussion and expressing compassion for the foolish: isn't that a heart-warming message about the nature of criticism?