Is criticism political? Should it be? I just looked at the reviews, en masse, of Caryl Churchill's recent play, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, and what's remarkable is the extent to which it is criticised or congratulated according to each reviewer's (presumed) ideological bias.
Bear in mind this is 50 minutes of theatre devoted almost exclusively to cataloguing the crimes and misdemeanours of America. It duly received four stars in the Guardian and a whopping five from ex-Guardian critic Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard. There were correspondingly damning notices from the Telegraph ("frankly, shows don't come much worse than this") and the Daily Mail ("the most laughably bad thing I have seen"), and a fence-sitting three-star response in the fence-sitting Times. The seemingly obvious conclusion is that these reviewers are not so much assessing a work of art as approving (or disapproving) its politics.
Is that a problem? I'm not naive enough to think there are such things as objective opinions. Nor, if there were, would I want to read them - or, as a critic myself, write them down. Of course one's response to a play depends on whether one agrees with its arguments - which are in any event inextricable from its artistry. The more so in this instance as Churchill's new play is nine parts politics to one part not much else.
But I do think critics sometimes let their agenda - which can be political with a large or small p - get in the way of telling readers whether a play is actually any good or not. A lesser example is to be found in David Hare's evidently ropey new US/UK argy-bargy drama The Vertical Hour, which Hare's fans in the British press have struggled to defend, and US critics have torn to bits.
But Churchill's play has laid this aspect of reviewing bare. Just look at the glee with which the right-wing critics demolish the play, and the desperation of the left-wing reviewers to champion it. Myself, I'm a lifelong Guardian reader, a seasoned America-basher and a keen Caryl Churchill fan. But Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? seems to me a crude, unenlightening and hard-to-enjoy piece of theatre. I'd rather see a thrilling apolitical (or indeed right-wing) show than one whose political or aesthetic agenda I support, but which is a bit dull. And yet such a play might not get past the censor-critics. Should we be perfectly happy that theatre reviewers campaign as well as assess? Or are they too straitjacketed by their prejudices?
