The Almeida's Big White Fog showcases our black acting talent: when will black theatre critics get a break? Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Nick Hytner's "dead white men" remarks got a lot of journalistic knickers in a twist. Theatre critics, all too willing to dish it out are, seem to be less good at taking it. From the indignant responses to Hytner, you'd think we were all completely beyond reproach.
Actually, we are lucky to have these jobs and we shouldn't for a moment forget it. Critics are fallible. Even the very best ones have off-nights, occasionally regret what they've written the morning after, knock back a few too many interval drinks once in a while, or suffer from burnout.
And there are undoubtedly problems with the ecology of theatre criticism, though I think Lyn Gardner is nearer the mark than Hytner about exactly what these are. Critics tend to have very long tenures indeed and, like artistic directors who stay put in the same job for years on end, they can succumb to tunnel vision. Staying open to new ideas about what theatre is and can be, and what constitutes a good play, isn't easy. This, of course, works both ways: if some theatre critics are staid, so is plenty of theatre.
While certain productions do split critics along gender lines (Oleanna anyone?), I don't for a second believe that all "ageing daily male" reviewers are misogynist dinosaurs. Many of them, like the Telegraph's Charles Spencer, bring a palpable and undiminished relish to their jobs. But a little self-examination on everyone's part wouldn't go amiss. I still remember a row with a colleague - one of those booze-fuelled arguments that consist of hollering pointlessly at the other person until 2am. What triggered it was my suggestion that theatre critics are still not as diverse a crowd as they should be.
I can't get too glum about the state of criticism when there are reviewers as delicious as Susannah Clapp, as witty as Paul Taylor, and as passionate as Lyn Gardner on the scene. But I do find it disturbing that while black playwrights and actors are making inroads, there isn't a single black critic writing for a national or Sunday newspaper in this country. The fact that my friend - also a critic - didn't find this weird was enough to make me swear and spray spit like a lawn-sprinkler.
The questions of whose judgments we hear and why are important ones. Michael Coveney's 2005 article about the death of serious theatre criticism is well argued, yet in some ways things are getting better. As Michael Billington and Kate Bassett have been quick to point out, these days reviewing isn't solely the province of elderly, Oxbridge-educated men in polished shoes. I have a number of women critics and editors to thank for the fact that I get to spend most of my nights watching plays: Metro's Claire Allfree and the Guardian's Lyn Gardner and Claire Armitstead, to name a few. And Time Out's Jane Edwardes has also been instrumental in giving a new generation of reviewers a break.
Coveney is right to champion informed, thoughtful and amusing criticism, but I don't buy into the idea of a golden age (give me Tynan's profiles over his reviews any day). Where Coveney sees death, I see the possibility of change. Hytner isn't wrong to suggest it's time for new voices, and it's about time that some of them were black.
