Ever been to a movie that was just horrible... absolutely horrible... and you walk out of the theatre... and the person you went with LOVED it? Or vice versa? Welcome to the world of reviews.
Having been in the theatre for a while, and having dealt with theatre as both an actor and a scholar, it seems to me that reviews serve two basic purposes.
1) Reviews help potential audience members decide whether or not a particular piece of entertainment is something that they'd enjoy, be it a concert, opera, art exhibit, movie, piece of theatre, etc.
2) Reviews help to chronicle that a given piece of art happened. This is incredibly important to many of the performing arts because there is no other record of the performance. Perhaps there are a few photos. On occasion there is a video of a performance (usually of bad quality.) We really look to reviews to get a sense of what happened. I have used perhaps a hundred reviews (maybe more) from the late 19th and early 20th centuries in my dissertation.
One hopes that a reviewer is appropriately educated in the medium he/she is reviewing. This isn't always the case. If you ever want to look at horrible reviews, look at university newspapers. You get some student who has seen a play or two, writing an article for the entire campus to read about a campus production. Usually they spend 2/3rds of the article simply giving a play synopsis... potentially ruining the show for anyone who hadn't seen it before, and then they give very simplistic reasons for why they liked or didn't like something.
The opinions of this person are very valid.... but that doesn't mean they should be publicly reviewing things. Hell, I like dance concerts... and my opinion of a dance concert is as valid as anyone else's opinion of that concert.... but I am not an appropriate person to be doing reviews of dance concerts.
Thankfully, when you do work in a big city, you get good people reviewing the shows. I've found two reviews of the show so far, both from respected reviewers. The reviews are VERY different. Two people who saw the same show on the same night communicating very different experiences of the show.
This is why, as an actor, you can't judge your performance by a review. It's hard not to... for some reason we think the opinion of a reviewer is higher up than someone else. It just isn't the case though. Maybe we think this because the reviewer typically doesn't know us, so perhaps they are commenting on our work in a rather unbiased fashion. But what about the stranger that searcher you out after the show to tell you that they liked your work? Isn't that of equal value?
I once had a guy say to me... "Reviews... If you are going to believe the good ones, you have to believe the bad ones." He's right... because they are both valid. Truth is, someone in this world hated the best performance I have ever given and someone in this world loved the worst performance I have ever given.
So here are two reviews... one was mixed and one was glowing.
We'll start with the mixed one. This one comes from a respected writer for the Indianapolis Star which is the major newspaper in INDY. It's always nice when you can get a review from the major paper. If you look at this review, the focus is almost entirely on the acting of four characters... particularly Iago along with Othello, Desdemona and Cassio. You can tell this reviewer is educated in the play and he backs up many of his points with very specific observations of the performance. You can also tell that this reviewer has an idea of how parts of the play SHOULD play out... at least according to him. I'm not saying this is good or bad... I'm just pointing it out. Even if the review is mixed, I very much appreciate that it is educated and intelligent. If you are looking for comments about my work, they are at the bottom of the article.
http://blogs.indystar.com/upstage/2012/07/23/harts-othello-at-white-river-state-park/
The second review is from another known and respected reviewer in the area. He writes his review in a completely different manner. He writes more about the overall experience of being in the park watching the show. Whereas the first reviewer focused on very specific points for a few actors, this review is much more general... another perfectly valid way to write the review. Also, note the differences in reviews for the character Iago. The first reviewer wasn't a fan of Iago's choices... the second reviewer LOVED them. Iago is that kind of character... he's like a Hamlet... very polarizing in terms of evaluating performaces of the character.
http://www.examiner.com/review/heartland-actors-production-of-othello-grips-and-engages
So who do you trust? Who do you choose to listen to? Is one more valid than the other? Nope. And yes, I came out of it pretty well, and I can use those as I work to get tenure, and I thank both of these gentlemen for taking the time to see and write about our work. But what I REALLY like is hearing all the stories from people that had never seen the play before and actually understood it and liked it. For some of them, it was the first time they had ever seen a play... and that is awesome.
In the end, I think what most people really want out of a Shakespeare play is that they just want to understand the story... PLEASE BE THE PEOPLE WHO FINALLY SHOW ME WHY THIS PLAY AND THIS PLAYWRIGHT ARE CONSIDERED GREAT!!!!! We've all been told Shakespeare is great. Yet, reading Shakespeare is a pain in the butt and a bad production of Shakespeare is EXTRA BAD because the language is hard to follow. I think that most people just hope that this group of actors in front of them will be the group that can finally showcase the beauty of Shakespeare... that's what they want. Well... that and some good costumes.
Final note... the first reviewer actually had a running commentary going about the show via his twitter account. He wrote 21 tweets during the performance... some are pretty funny. You can see the running twitter feed here... look for the posts from July 20th.
https://twitter.com/jayharveyarts
Tomorrow I'll talk about letting go of a character. I've really enjoyed intertwining myself with Michael Cassio for the last couple of months but I think tomorrow I'll officially say good-bye.
No comments:
Post a Comment