TONY PALMER
Last week, a fine comedy called Father's Day by Oliver Hailey closed on Broadway after just one performance largely as a result of a hostile review in the New York Times by its drama critic, Clive Barnes.
Unfortunately, the role of the critic in our promiscuous culture only occasionally comes under scrutiny; that little bunch of mostly illiterate hacks, of which I am sometimes one, who claim the right to dictate to us their semi -digested half-truths scribbled down in the thirty minutes between the curtain coming down and the pub door shutting. Even those whose publication date allows them the possibility of further consideration seem often to use this opportunity for moral- ising upon a particularly sore point, whether or not that sore point has any relevance to the play or film in hand. To see one's work dismissed in a cliché repeated for its clever- ness rather than its insight is not only heart- breaking but insulting. How dare these jum- ped-up, baggy-trousered, overblown adoles- cents behave with such superiority to some- one who has flogged himself, however mis- takenly, in the pursuit of some lonely vision of which the critic, by the very nature of the beast, can hardly conceive let alone emulate.
I am overstating my case, of course, but in the hope of rattling something approaching sense into the minds of those who fall down and worship at the mention of the word critic. Somehow, we're all in it together. The newspaper editor who permits his col- umns to be fouled by these retired minds, the general public, whoever that is, for read- ing, believing and then shamefacedly deny- ing that he is believing what has been given the dubious authority of print; the theatre manager or equivalent who flails around like a stabbed beetle alternately wheedling and dining these apologetic freaks and then cursing when the freak doesn't come up with the goodies, or else using the one good word from an otherwise hostile review as honest promotion; and lastly the actors or musicians who say they never read reviews but in fact keep them hidden under the bed as if they were the new pornography. Viva the critic!
If they/we were harmless or even enter- taining, you could pass the whole thing off as an absurd giggle. But they are danger- ous. They/we create myths. We have to, otherwise we would have no justification with which to persuade ourselves that what we do is worthwhile. These myths, lusting as they do after a necessary self-importance, either inflate what could be important so that it explodes in an orgy of over-exposure, or else destroy what is tender by fatuous and dismissive drivel.
Another striking example of this occurred recently if you consider the fate of the play now at the Queen's Theatre—and long may she reign—starring Laurence Harvey, Ru- pert Davies and Richard Heifer, called
Child's Play. 'This is not so much a whodun- nit as a what-did-he-done?' wrote Peter Lewis in the Daily Mail. Pretty ironic, not to say witty, I'd reckon that was. The well- known Eric Shorter (or is it Sorter?) of the Daily Telegraph uses that well-known device of saying what he wanted the play to be about, then says it wasn't and so concludes that it fails. Milton Shulman says : 'Child's Play by Robert Marasco at the Queen's at- tempts to investigate a theme far too intricate and complex for the talents of its author.' According to whom? Ah yes, Milton Shul- man of course. 'I doubt,' he continues, `if this play has much of a future in the West End.' Wrong again. At the moment, it's playing to almost capacity houses.
But now consider this. 'A wonderfully pow- erful melodrama that will thrill audiences for a long time to come. Never for a moment does [the author] lose his grip on the atten- tion, and as the mystery is chillingly unrav- elled, he produces one stroke after another of Grand Guignol horror.' He traps the temper of the times, the currents of rebellion and uneasiness that almost visibly pollute the daily air.' A miracle of a work ... there was a constant breathless silence in order not to miss one word.' Olive Barnes writing in the New York Times, Time magazine and Corriere d'Informazione, in that order. They can't be describing the same play, I hear you cry. But they are. Different pro- ductions, but the same goddam play. On Broadway, it won five Tony awards, includ- ing that for the best play, and was the smash hit of 1970. In Milan and Rome, it's a sell- out. In provincial England, it has also been well received. But in provincial London. according to most of the critics; 'a notably unthrilling evening', quips Irving Wardle.
Of course, Child's Play follows in a noble tradition. Death of a Salesman, Inherit the Wind, Bus Stop, the entire works of Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill and Edward Albee—all of them have at one time or another been written off in the com- mercial theatre by our leaders of cultural thought. The success of the English thea- tre on Broadway, however, hardly bears re- peating; so what is it about American thea- tre that apparently makes it so unseaworthy? Different taste in comedy one could under- stand, but again you would hardly describe Diary of Anne Frank (a worldwide hit everywhere except London) as a merry little romance. It can't just be that we have an
aversion to things American (although jud- ging by the number of anti-American sneers in the English reviews, I'm not so sure about that) whereas in the States at the prospect of an English accent all minds and legs are opened. In this case, moreover, it can't be any inferiority in the English version since it had the same director as did the Broadway
version and he thought, and David Merrick thought, the English production better. And the American critics are even more notor- iously demagogic than their English counter- parts.
Fortunately, in the case of Child's Play that well-known phenomenon, the money- paying public, must be blind or deaf or both because they are filling the theatre.
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