Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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An article published in the Observer, in the theatre section, attracted my attention. The author, Michael Coveney, asks an important question: has the English theatre, once a benchmark of English culture, been sidelined? But this question is actually the corollary of the subject of the article which is drama criticism.

The writer is himself a drama critic who worked for the Financial Times. The FT, according to Coveney, "[i]n the early seventies used three theatre critics, four or five music critics, a dance critic and [had a] regular weekly column on television, radio, cinema and architecture." Nowadays, according to Coveney, such great critics "are rare birds; rare birds need a welcoming aviary and zookeepers are not on the lookout for such special and specialist breeds of plumage any more."

If there are now some drama critics who have prospered, like Michael Billington of the Guardian (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in London), it is because of "committed editors and supportive arts editors. Billington is an example of what a drama critic should be. He went through a slow haul of a career as a critic, with its period of apprenticeship, dedication and accumulation of wisdom and experience." But this has suddenly become a thing of the past and now there emerged what the author calls "personality writers" with no background in their subject.

At one time drama critics were responsible for consolidating the fame of up- and-coming playwrights, and they were identified by the writers they supported. It was thanks to Kenneth Tynan that Bertolt Brecht was staged. But the writer believes there are several factors that have gone into circumscribing the role of the critic. The theatre is no longer the vital arena of British culture. It is no longer regarded as important as it was in relation to other arts. Nowadays films, television and the Internet have left the drama critic at the back of the queue. Theatre is now "yesterday's news". Current plays are no different in subject matter from what audiences get on TV or the Internet. There are now plays about the war in Iraq, the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, the collapse of the railways or problems of multiculturalism.

What the current drama criticism suggests is that "theatre now is fair game for anyone who can turn a phrase. Gone is the time when the critic needed the slow haul of apprenticeship and experience." Today, in the words of Coveney "too many theatre reviews do little more than describe something as 'great' or 'awful'." Most reviews seem to lack the knowledge that was taken for granted a generation ago. He mentions a critic who left the first night of a young and promising playwright, during the interval, because he claimed that he was bored by the play. Coveney remarks that his boredom "may be interesting to his readers, but is surely an inadequate, not to say impertinent, response to the work of a leading young dramatist".

What, then, is the solution of this deplorable state? What is needed, suggests the writer, is a new group of younger critics "who will combine the enthusiasm of the aficionado with the rigour of the informed task master". Such a group is nowhere to be seen. High culture, says Coveney, and its acolytes, the serious critics, "have gradually become marginalised in the mass media. People's cultural tastes are now accepted as a democratic given and the idea that a cultural elite could impose 'higher' tastes is no longer accepted" as it was 30 years ago.

The article ends with a quote from an Australian critic, Peter Conrad: "Critics are the means whereby society becomes conscious of itself, aware of the direction it is taking. There can be no culture without them. We still need critics. But better ones."