By Jim Hagarty
1989
It didn’t take me very long to realize the play I was watching unfold on the stage before me was a real stinker. It was too long, too boring, too slow, too rambling, too confusing, too serious, too clever and way too depressing. A lot of people who sat through the first half were nowhere to be seen after the intermission. I bravely fought off sleep all through Act II, and felt like a kid suffering through a long-winded funeral eulogy for some long-lost relative I’d never met. Some people headed for the exits as soon as the last dreary word of the script was spoken, not waiting for the curtain call.
But to my astonishment, the headline above a newspaper review the next day announced: “Theatre triumphant again, latest play is divine.”
“The director of this magnificent gem left his audience wanting more,” wrote the critic. It didn’t leave me wanting more. It left me wanting the director arrested.
“The pace of the play superbly reflected the idleness and calm in the lives of its main characters,” the review stated. If the characters had been any more idle and calm, there’d have been paramedics swarming all over the stage trying to save them.
“The last, heartbreaking moments of this exquisite story drove the audience to the very edge of the precipice of spiritual darkness, stopping them gently short of emotional catastrophe, and tugging them back with the beauty of the most evocative words our battered language has to offer,” said the review. Actually, I also had some battered language to offer the last, exquisite moments of the story but the ushers didn’t give me a chance to get it all out.
Incredibly, the reviewer found “this sensitive and timeless portrayal of the utter shabbiness of the average life” to be delightful, marvellous, enlightening, arresting, moving, charming, meaningful, playful and humorous. I thought it stunk.
To the critic, the play was a “must-see.” To me, it was a “must-avoid-seeing-at-all-costs.”
Later that day, I was back at the theatre again, this time for a musical. This show was as good as the one the night before it had been bad. It was fast-paced and funny, colourful, cheerful and exciting. The music and singing were terrific and the audience loved every song. After one dance routine halfway through the show, the theatre erupted in cheering and applause that lasted a full five minutes. When the play ended, the crowd was on its feet for a long, standing ovation.
“Theatre strikes out with latest, limp offering,” read the newspaper headline, as I looked over a paper at the breakfast table the next day. I almost choked on my cornflakes.
“When will today’s directors ever learn that no matter how fancy they dress up a tired, worn-out, old play, all they’ll ever have in the end is a tired, worn-out, old play?” wrote the reviewer.
What a tired, worn-out, old guy he is, I thought.
“This recycled bit of fluff should be swept from the stage,” wrote the critic, “and allowed to fade away unceremoniously and undisturbed.” I was anything but undisturbed.
“The actors’ timing was off, the sets were cheap and unimaginative, the songs were poorly sung and the dancing was a real snore,” the reviewer wrote. What a two-bit, pompous … “But, alas, poor as it was, the show was a real hit with the audience, a sure sign of its shallowness and lack of taste.”
I’ll show him shallowness and lack of taste.
My letter to the editor starts out: “After reading your paper’s recent so-called reviews of two productions at the theatre, I must say I was shocked and appalled …”
That’ll teach ’em.
You can’t get any more upset than shocked and appalled.
