Nul points ... Su Pollard, Amanda Symonds, Samantha Hughes and Miquel Brown. Photograph: Joel Ryan/PA
The Critics' Circle theatre awards were handed out this week, giving those few who review a chance to celebrate the theatre they enjoyed most over the past year. But as nice as it is to see critics showing their cheery side, it's their cruelly funny put-downs that make many of us value their service. (A favourite from Kenneth Tynan, on Vivien Leigh's performance in Titus Andronicus: "[She] receives the news that she is about to be ravished on her husband's corpse with little more than the mild annoyance of one who would have preferred foam rubber.")
So where are the awards for the productions that critics hated the most? Thankfully, there is now the Zero Stars Hall of Fame to give them their due.
Started by the popular West End Whingers blog, the online hall of fame - actually a hall of infamy - is described as "the repository of theatrical ignominy" by the pair of sharp-witted blogocritics, Phil and Andrew, who run it. It is a list of UK productions that failed so badly critics couldn't even spare a single measly star for them.
The Zero Stars Hall of Fame got a new addition this week thanks to the Guardian's very own Lyn Gardner, who gave no celestial bodies to An Audience With the Mafia. She hated this barely dramatised history of the American mafia so much that she considered "hiring a hit man to put [the lead actor] out of his misery". Ironically, however, Gardner may have instead given the show eternal life in the Zero Stars Hall of Fame.
Gardner has, in fact, inducted more shows in the Zero Stars Hall of Fame than any other critic (She also blanked Menopause - the Musical and The Bicycle Men). As for the other two shows currently honoured in the hall - Songs My Mother Taught Me and The Dorchester - they have ended up there thanks to Alastair Macaulay of the FT and Sam Marlowe of the Times, respectively.
With only five members, the Hall of Fame is hardly comprehensive and the Whingers are currently seeking submissions. Noises off would like to nominate Behind the Iron Mask. The musical version of the Alexandre Dumas novel opened and shut on the West End in the summer of 2005. I actually went to see the three-hander based on the zero-star reviews, wanting to witness the madness of a musical so badly conceived that the main character spent the entire show singing through an iron mask. And I wasn't the only one who went and paid money solely to gawk. Blogger Emma Kennedy recounted her experience at the show on her blog at the time and quoted her favourite lyrics from the flop:
GYPSY: He's the man with the mask!
MASK MAN: Don't Ask! Don't ask!
That alone makes Behind the Iron Mask worthy of being remembered through the ages. What would you nominate for the Zero Star Hall of Fame?
Those who have been on the receiving end of no-star reviews can take heart: bad reviews aren't always a career death sentence. Take Charles Dance, who won the best actor award at the Critics' Circle awards this week. On his blog, critic Michael Coveney reported Dance's unusual acceptance speech: "All good parties should have someone along to insult the host, and Charles Dance fitted the bill perfectly when he read out some of his own bad reviews while receiving the best actor award...
"He reminded me of the film hunk Victor Mature who, on being refused admission to a nightclub on the grounds of being an actor, protested that he was no such thing and had the reviews to prove it.
"Dance read out verdicts by myself, Charles Spencer and Robert Gore-Langton to the effect that he was no good in Chekhov, stiff as a board and dull as mud."
From zero to hero, as it were ...
