Every week I get an organic veg box delivered. Recently I had people coming to stay, so I emailed to request extra supplies. "No problem," came the reply, adding unexpectedly: "I am a great fan of your website since our daughter joined Dundee Rep this year."
So the woman who sends my veg is the mother of an actor whose work I frequently review. Fortunately, I've enjoyed her daughter's performances, but next time I give her a good write-up can anyone be sure it's not because I don't want a delivery of rotten tomatoes?
This is the kind of ethical dilemma that has recently been debated, albeit more seriously, on these pages as part of the blog debate on critics being friends with artists. Personally, I'd find it impractical not to have any social or professional contact with people whose work I might end up reviewing. The challenge is to be unsentimental in my writing at the risk of a frosty reception the next time I see the person concerned. It's not a way to get close friends, but maybe it earns a grudging respect.
But there's another side of the argument. In addition to the pressure for the critic to be an Ordinary Joe, the man in the stalls who's as impartial about what he sees as the paying public, there is the expectation that he should be quite the reverse: the educated expert, thoroughly versed in the history of theatre, the work of the playwright, the technicalities of the production and all the wider social resonances the play throws up.
The critic therefore needs to position himself somewhere between two polar extremes. At one end is Very Ordinary Joe who knows what he likes, but little else. He is incapable of putting a show in context or commenting on its aspirations. At the other is Professor Maven, who knows too much. He risks alienating everyone apart from other experts who understand his field of reference.
Take the example of an adaptation of a novel. To have a sense of what's happening on stage, the diligent critic will read the original book. He might also recall earlier adaptations of the same work and make sure he's revisited the Hollywood version on DVD. Taken to an extreme, he would also sit in on rehearsals, read the script and discuss ideas with the director.
The insight this research brings can be invaluable, but it takes the critic further and further away from the experience of the ordinary theatregoer. Where is the delight in an unexpected narrative, the immersion in a new imaginative world and the thrill of experiencing a live performance in the moment? Do we want a critic who's all head and no heart?
There isn't a straightforward answer. We'd expect a critic to be familiar with Romeo and Juliet, but would we want him to be so familiar with it that he didn't notice the rest of the audience struggling to keep up with the language? When Glasgow's Arches Theatre stages the rare Eugene O'Neil play Hughie in March should the critic approach it as innocently as the rest of the audience or should he fork out anything up to £97 to get the script second-hand on Amazon?
As Lyn Gardner argues in her latest blog, it shouldn't be necessary for audiences to do background reading before seeing a show, so how obligatory should it be for critics?
