I'm Uneasy... Not Like Sunday Mornings...

Never let it be said that I can let things go. After the generous response to my article in which I bemoaned my inability to enjoy populist theatre, I've come up with more self-indulgent and pompous thoughts.

Can we blame media structures?

It was probably inevitable that I would blame other critics for my failures - I suggested that reviewing was becoming a synopsis with adjectives, with a lack of detailed argument.

To be fair, this isn't all criticism, and it is not just print criticism that does this. I ripped off a piece by Catherine Love last week, and it had plenty of detail, historical knowledge and sharp analysis. While I am sympathetic to the idea that the minimal space given to theatre criticism in newspapers can encourage 'potted reviews' (and that the pressure of on-line immediacy discourages expansive writing (TL;DR)), it does not necessarily mean that reviews are always cursory. I generalised from a specific instance because I have a vague idea that reviews are getting briefer.

So, the structures of the media are a factor, but not the whole story. What is regarded as acceptable as a review might be, though.

This might have been an attempt to address the moaning about critics and their role which kicked off after that Stage article. 

Who the hell are you to judge?

I admit that I have been guilty of lazy reviewing. If I wanted to, I could present a list of 'bad practices' taken from my own work. So, yeah, I'm a hypocrite. However, I do suffer from regular and painful abscesses, which can be regarded as a punishment. It's no excuse, but feel free to relish the thought of Mr Academic Big Shot here whining like a baby.

What's wrong with populism?

Nothing. Please don't apologise for liking something just because I don't find Diderot's theories in it. Part of my conflict comes from the disjuncture between my opinion and the majority response. I'm working out how to recognise that difference without surrendering my opinions or being patronising. 

I could point to my long and tedious history of criticism, and mention that I have very... distinctive tastes. For those who follow criticism, that's a bonus.  For those who don't, who surf onto my opinions, I'm a guy with a stick up his ass (see previous point).

No, what's wrong with populism?

It permits weak productions to get away with shoddy theatricality. I approve Our Ladies for not over-sexualising the young women (the costumes never went Britney, for example). But I also worry that the presentation of working class lives - and frankly, given that the play ends with one girl still in conflict over her sexual desire and another pregnant, pretty difficult lives - for entertainment is problematic. 

I'll wind myself into a knot here. I struggle with political theatre, and the self-awareness of Our Ladies' heroines is admirable... but I couldn't help but think: this is a play about young women who are being fucked over by an economic system that limits their options and aspiration. Yet, at the end, they sing some Bob Marley and every little thing's gonna be alright. 

These particular anxieties - theatre as valve for frustrations, the working class as a vaudeville routine - applies to serious agit-prop, too. And, like my relationship to 27 and Iphigenia in Splott, it is unresolved. 

Unlike populist theatre, I'm uneasy.

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour @ SECC

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a problem. Tonight I went to see a well received and well reviewed play by the National Theatre of Scotland. Written by Lee Hall, who did Billy Elliot, Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour is an alcohol drenched, sex obsessed romp that follows director Vicky Featherstone's once-stated commitment to make theatre that is a good night out, and not a stuffy evening of academic performance.

I think that I like stuffy evenings. I got very little pleasure from Our Ladies. I thought the musical choices were arbitrary - not illustrating the themes of the play, but singalong anthems to hide the sloppy character development. 

Knowing that I have a problem is the first step. My problem is that I go to the theatre for a transcendent experience. Surrounded by an audience which is clearly enjoying itself, I wonder whether I am the right person to be reviewing unashamedly popular theatre. 

The cast are brilliant: great singers, full of energy and, when called upon to give a monologue, moving and passionate. The script has its moments: Hall can write a speech full of detail and suggestion, although he might be leaning on the source novel, The Sopranos. Featherstone keeps things running at a good pace. 

But this is barely theatre. Take a pivotal scene, when two of the young women are discussing their tentative desire. They kiss, they break, and one explains to the other that it isn't going to work. So the other  turns to the audience and says her heart is broken.

That's narrative, not theatre. Why couldn't she have acted her heartbreak? Why have the subtext spelled out so clumsily? There is so much chat to the audience - just like in the recent adaptation of The Iliad at The Lyceum - that actual performance of emotion is replaced by words. Some people call this Brechtian. I don't.

I realise that I am in a minority here. The audience lap it up - possibly because the format ('closer to a gig,' say the programme notes) allows plenty of space for those show stopping numbers. 

And there are loads of reviews that give it four stars. I am nothing if not pragmatic. I want to give the cast and direction the respect they deserve. So I turn to the reviews for answers. 

All I got is plot summaries and bland statements that it is good, or superb, or dynamic. There's no argument, no suggestions of why reading the book would not give me everything the play has. 

So, I am left with a few questions.

If my opinion is so different from the audience around me, does that make my opinion less valid?

Am I just a terrible snob who can't have a good time (I have been annoyed by Breakfast at Tiffany's, too, this week, another populist adaptation which refuses to develop dramatic tension)?

Has the review become little more than an exercise in rewriting the synopsis and few qualitative adjectives? 

Who Am I?

My name is Gareth K Vile, and I am a critic. I am also a student at

Mr Balme

the University of Glasgow.

There is this language idea... it's called e-prime. I am sure it is more complicated than I am about to claim, but it seems basically to be about not using the verb to be to make statements about objects.

So let's try that first paragraph again.

I call myself Gareth K Vile, and I work as a critic, both for The List and on my own blog. I study dramaturgy at the University of Glasgow. 

See the difference: I make no claims about my identity, only about my behaviour. 

I only mention this because I experience a contradiction between my two sets of behaviour. I want to work out the tensions these roles create in my sense of self.

Let's try that last sentence again.

I want to work out the tensions that arise when I write about performance.

I mean, who cares about 'my sense of self'? Can I offer empirical evidence that either 'sense' or 'self' exists? I can gaze at my navel all day - there's plenty of it to see. But who cares?

My writing, however, places itself in the public domain, a performance. And let's get to the idiocy that runs through it like the mould on fancy cheese.

I read this sentence earlier, from Balme's The Theatrical Public Sphere.

Dennis Kennedy has adumbrated this scholarly paradox which oscillates between an empirical psychological or social entity on the one hand, that most scholars in the humanities have neither the training nor inclination to investigate, and a theatrical construct, 'a pale hypothetical inference of the commentator's imagination', on the other.

Hold it right there, skipper. If I wrote like that on my blog, or for The List, I would be called not Gareth K Vile but a pretentious wanker. But if I wrote that in an essay, I might get a tick and a 'good point!!!!' pencilled in the margin.

Just so I appear to understand Balme's contention, I'd like to add that he pinpoints the problems in the way that scholars discuss 'the audience' - they sometimes mean one thing, sometimes something else.

When I ponce about performing the role of 'teacher of criticism', I often attack critics who use 'we' in reviews. I have a catch-phrase: 'the only we that I recognise is the one I need if the show goes on over ninety minutes.' 

I don't believe that a critic can speak on behalf of an audience: say 'I', not 'we' (and definitely not 'one', unless the Queen wrote the review). I quite like the Rastafarian use of 'I and I', though, denoting the individual self and its bond with God.

I think that Balme and I agree that 'we' represents 'a pale hypothetical inference of the commentator's imagination'. So the academic formulation does support my critical attitudes... 

My alleged crisis takes on a familiar form: I perform different identities, depending on the context. The relationship between academic reading and critical writing, however, looks healthy. 

Well, it has given me a rambling article, at least...

Popular and academic... the battle begins

And on and on and on...