Everyone's a critic? Please.

Joe and I took two friends of ours to see "The 25th Annual Putnam Country Spelling Bee" at the Fisher last Saturday night, and guess who sat next to the world's most obnoxious couple? ME!!
It never fails. For some reason, whenever this kind of person is in a crowd, I always end up next to them.
What were the first clues of how my night would go? Well, we were up in the balcony, and in the early portions of the show, and particularly when the audience spellers were getting to the stage, many balcony folks took the opportunity to move up to empty seats in the mezzanine. This was distracting, but since I was tempted to do it myself, I didn't judge them harshly. At least they seemed to be trying to do it at a reasonable interval.
But the folks next to me jeered and kept saying, "Can you believe this? Look at this! So rude!"
I was thinking, as rude as talking at regular volume during a live performance? But said nothing.
As the show continued, it became clear that Mr. Moron's response, when he found something funny (which was quite often), was to repeat the just-voiced line while laughing. Ugh.
He was also a fan of articulating the painfully obvious. The final audience speller didn't get a word wrong by the intended interval, and as the cast looked to give her additional words to spell, Mr. Moron said, "They can't get rid of her! Oh my God, they're trying to get rid of her!"
Fortunately, the show turns slightly more serious for stretches of time as it progresses, so Mr. M shut up for a bit. But then, just as the final scene is underway, he began to assess his experience with his loudly giggling blonde wife. "Wasn't that good!" he said, at full volume.
"A great time," she said. "So fun."
"I know. It was really funny, wasn't it?"
Dude, it's still going. SHUT UP. For the love of God.
Every time this happens, Joe insists that I should have said something. But honestly, whether you're polite about it or rude, I tend to think that this course of action will change nothing. In fact, it might spur them to be even more disruptive, because they know it's driving you crazy. Argh. There's just no good solution, I don't think. But I must admit that I'm perpetually astonished, no matter how many times it happens, to find that people are so rude (this drives me nuts at movie theaters, too). Why on earth did you buy tickets? To chat while occasionally focused on the show? And are things in this regard getting even worse, in this iPod world of personal entertainment entitlement?

Well, I'm about to test how much blogging is like a cry in the wilderness, because I'm here today to unload some big, personal news: Joe and I announced to gathered family and friends yesterday that I'm pregnant, two months in, with a due date of May 7.
So yes, we'll be raising a neurotic little critic ("You call that crawling?") of our own, and although I'm terrified, I've made peace with the terror. (This is healthy, I think.)
Really, all has gone remarkably smoothly these last eight weeks; I've run a 10K and a 5K, and suffered only the most minor of symptoms (mild fatigue, soreness, small twinges of back pain). Hopefully, this signals a relatively straightforward pregnancy, but we'll see...

The fall season is finally in full swing, and no one's happier about that than me. I honestly think that reviewing is what I do best, so when weeks and weeks go by without a show, I start feeling pretty listless (not to mention hungry for theater).
And while many people in the theater community probably think that too much power lies in the hands of a few critics, everyone should know that we get criticized, too -- sometimes in pretty humiliating ways.
The biggest instance of this happened at dinner theater performance. Joe generally can't come to Thursday night openings - too hard for him to get up early the next morning - so I was by myself at this round table for eight. Everyone was chatting and friendly, so between bites of my cheesecake, I revealed who I was, and this woman said, "Oh, you know, we hated 'Boston Marriage.' We left at intermission. We just couldn't stand it."
I'd just given a pretty glowing review to the show, of course, since I'd really enjoyed the wordplay, the way it talked up to the audience, and the strong, witty female characters. But to each their own, so I replied, "Well, as I said in my review, Mamet can be polarizing. People tend to have a strong reaction to him. You either click into it and love it, or it's not for you at all, and you dislike it intensely. I happen to like him."
"Well, we just despised it," the woman continued, not about to accept my peace pipe.
I don't remember precisely what she said next, but the impression I had of her next words were, "This other couple we went with and my husband all felt disappointed -- like, oh, we thought maybe this reviewer would be one we could trust."
I continued eating my cheesecake, but I kept thinking, "Why did this woman make a point of telling me, essentially, that I'm a crummy critic? Why can't she just be polite while we have a meal together?"
Naturally, this bothered me all night; I'm way too obsessive to shake something like this off. But I kept reminding myself, too, that being honest, which is a big part of my mostly wonderful job, has never made anyone popular.
I suppose that's just as well. I wouldn't know what to do with popularity. (I play the trombone - how cool do you think that made me in middle school and high school?)

This is tough one, folks, I have to tell you. You know that the performers are talented, hard-working amateurs -- so what's a critic to do?
What I've finally come around to thinking is that, after being on the job for more than three years, I need to measure each group by its own best show. That way, I remember what each company is capable of; and if a show falls short of that, it's fair to say so.
The problem is that some community shows are really done more for fun and self-satisfaction than necessarily to please an audience; do amateur performers really want to be publicly critiqued? It's rough going, and I don't like to do it, but I always try to be fair.
The problem is that whenever I have a lukewarm response to a show, and honestly report that opinion, I dread opening my e-mail during the next few days, expecting to get messages accusing me of being anti-children (or worse). But just as is true for local filmmakers who ask me to review their movies, the realization has to sink in that no matter what good will I may have toward him/her, in the end, I have to say what I think.
Sure, I want fledgling local artists to succeed; it's even in my best interest that they do. But my job is to report my opinions, and I can't let anything stand in the way of that, or I lose credibility. And what's a positive review from Little Mary Sunshine worth, really?
(You may wonder, how is a critic hatched? By a father who, upon seeing a 98% on his little girl's test, says, "That's pretty good. What did you get wrong?" That I became a critic is not remotely surprising to my mother, since I was consequently shaped in my father's image.)

An interesting article ran in The New York Times last week about Arthur Miller having a secret son (with his third wife) who suffered from Down Syndrome.
In a response that was fairly common for that era, Miller and his wife placed the boy in an institution -- which, by itself, doesn't seem so shocking. What IS shocking is Miller's wife's claim: that Arthur almost never accompanied her on her weekly visits to see their son.
The article raises questions about the separation between art and artist that I find compelling; and as one person who was quoted pointed out, because Miller was such a sanctimonious, humanist scold about blacklisting, etc., his hypocrisy hits much harder than it might otherwise.
I must admit to feeling disappointment in learning this new information. Clearly, Miller was in an impossibly difficult situation, and no one knows how he/she would respond unless they were in it themselves; but we all LIKE to think that we'd go visit every week, don't we?
I guess that our heroes ultimately can't help but disappoint us with their only-too-human weaknesses. And although the article laments the fact that Miller never explicitly wrote a play about his son, my guess is that if I go back and re-read plays from that time in his career, they will reveal a man haunted and tied up in knots.
For after struggling with writing fiction myself for many years now, I've come to understand that it's among the most autobiographical forms out there. The people may be made up, the situations may be wholly imagined, but the neurotic thing that's driving you crazy will be out there for all to see every time.
And interestingly, Joe's response to this news about Miller is that it wouldn't affect his legacy at all. Joe argued that Shakespeare seems to have deserted his wife for years at a time, cheated on her (with both sexes), etc., and his work has suffered in the public mind not at all. I said Shakespeare's collective pardon may be helped by way of his existence in the distant, distant past, whereas Miller is contemporary. But then Joe said, "Besides you and other critics, there are scholars and those who work in theater that will read and think about this. To everyone else, he'll forever be the guy who wrote 'Death of a Salesman.'"
He has a point; though much scholarship, textual re-evaluation, etc. will surely follow, the story will likely go the way of many academic controversies and concerns -- i.e., nowhere.

Hey, Mom, or confused visitors!
So here I am, folding under the pressure of a tech-obsessed world once again (just a few months ago, I finally caved and got a cell phone -- seriously). 

It's difficult to imagine anyone being interested in my caustic ramblings about theater, but I'm going to give it a shot, anyway. Really, it's the least I can do. I'm one of those lucky few people who LOVES her job, which involves writing about theater (and film, and occasionally books) in Ann Arbor, so I need you theater folks to succeed not only so I can keep adoring my charmed life, but so I can keep paying my bills, too.

Last night, Between the Lines hosted its annual Wilde Awards ceremony at the Gem Theatre, and my fabulous, follicly-challenged colleague, Don Calamia, and his publishers threw a hell of a party once again. 

I wish I could give out awards in my coverage area, but since every old-school publication is now essentially downsizing to the point of taking shifts to hand-crank the printing press, I don't see that happening. Joe (my lovely husband) and I have talked about throwing a year-end, unofficial "awards" party on our own dime, and maybe we will, but there never seems to be enough hours in the day. (Between holidays, frantic shopping, and painful family scenes, who has time?)

Anyway, I was very glad to see "Amadeus," "Escanaba in Love," "I Am My Own Wife," and Malcolm Tulip get wins last night. BTL has a much broader range than I do in terms of coverage area, so I didn't see much of the competition, but I have to think these shows/performances were among the very, very best.

I did have that strange feeling that I think any critic has at such a function, though. It's the same feeling I had while growing up in a house on the periphery of two neighborhoods - connected, but ultimately not a part of things. Seeing all these theater artisans, some of whom I speak with regularly, interacting excitedly with each other, while I mostly observe -- just like I do at shows -- is an odd sensation. A certain bit of distance is a necessity, or I wouldn't be able to review shows with any objectivity; but there's an undeniable yearning to belong more within this community as well. 

See, this is so wildly unprofessional of me to confess such things. But "unprofessional" is synonymous with blogs, yes?