Stewart Lee gets turned down for a drink by Lyn Garnder.
Last Thursday night the envelope containing my ticket to review Mark Ravenhill's Product and Stewart Lee's What Would Jesus Do? at London's Bush theatre also contained an invite to the post-show party. I threw it in the bin. The Bush is the only theatre I know of that regularly invites critics to post-show parties, but do any of us ever go? Surely not. Imagine finding yourself quaffing chilled white wine and making small talk with Stewart Lee half an hour after watching his one man show, knowing that in a few hours time you're going to be writing a review of his less than satisfactory play.
At best it would be toe-curlingly embarrassing; at worst it would be compromising. In the course of the conversation it may emerge that Lee has mortgaged his house to the hilt to raise the money to put the show on, that his apparent unfamiliarity with the script arose from a desperate family tragedy that meant he didn't have time to learn the lines properly, and after a couple of glasses of chardonnay, I may find myself really liking the guy and perhaps even wondering what it would be like to move in with him and have his babies. I'd like to think it wouldn't affect my judgment, but I'm not Snow White. Can I be so certain that instead of simply reviewing what I've seen, I wouldn't let these other factors and all the new information I've received compromise my attempt to write honestly about what I thought of the show?
Michael Billington could well be right when he says that if a critic can't write honestly about friends and acquaintances, he or she should change jobs. But why put yourself in the situation of having to review friends in the first place? Keep the job and the friendships separate. It may be disappointing that one's friends are therefore mostly accountants and dentists when you feel that really you're a soulmate with Deborah Warner or Matthew Warchus, but I can't see a way round it and it's a small price to pay for critical independence. I'm all for having a dialogue with artists; but bosom buddies, no.
The PR industry is already doing its best to blur the boundaries between review and preview, puff and comment, and the waters will only be muddied further if theatre critics and theatre artists start getting all chummy. British theatre practitioners often bemoan the fact that British critics are not engaged in the process and look to Europe where the critic-practitioner is common. But knowing too much about a production can be as disadvantageous as knowing too little. My preference is never to review a show about which I've written a feature, because the theatre-maker will have told me far more about the show than I want to know as a critic. I try to avoid programmes for the same reason. I want to review the show, not the talk; what the theatre-maker is doing, not what they've told me in great detail that they intend to do. Intention and execution are often far apart in the theatre.
But the real reason why critics and artists should not be friends is demonstrated by the literary pages of any newspaper, where chums give chums good reviews, feuds are fought and old scores settled. Those theatre-makers who sincerely believe that it's easy being a critic as well as a friend and colleague have only to take a peek at the row that erupted on playwright Fin Kennedy's website just before Christmas to see what happens when the boundaries blur. It's not pretty.
