On (Local) Criticism

Ian McKellen in "The Critic" (2023)

I am only going to explain this one more time.

For a time—a very brief time—we had newspapers. And the newspapers hired journalists, and paid them appropriately for their work. Some of them covered City Hall, some the local sports teams, others the arts. If you can imagine, some covered more than one "beat." And people subscribed to these papers or bought them at the corner store. And so, for a while, we had critics. And we hated them.

Then came the internet. And it was possible to tell exactly which of these journalists' work was actually being read. 100,000 clicks for an article about the latest city council meeting. 1,000,000,000 clicks for the minutiae of yesterday's game. And 10 clicks for the review of the latest show at your neighborhood professional theater.

On top of that, their bottom line was decimated by Craig's List. A quarter for a pape is nice. A dollar a line for a classified ad is money. Their legs were cut, and so, then, was it necessary to eliminate staff.

Tony Brown was cleveland (dot) com's last full-time theater critic, though by the end of his time there they had him covering additional beats. He left in 2011. Andrea Simakis, their style critic. was then also required to cover multiple beats, including theater. Now they pay whoever will do it on a by-the-word basis.

You get what you pay for. Theater criticism does not pay, so it is not paid for. Every theater critic currently working in our area is doing it because they enjoy doing so (in spite of the abuse they receive on social media from certain members of our theater community) and that is hardly a place to negotiate from. 

Class dismissed. I expect your papers on my desk first thing tomorrow.

See also:
On Criticism
Single White Fringe Geek (blog)
Criticism Is Dead! Long Live Criticism!

Henderson's Relish (condiment)

Henderson’s Relish is a condiment produced in and largely consumed in that part of South Yorkshire they call Sheffield. Not trying to start a fight with any native Sheffielders but this Midwest American would absolutely, in an attempt to easily communicate its flavor, compare it to Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce.

However, unlike that unctuous seasoning, Henderson’s does not include anchovies, so not only is it gluten free, it is also a vegan condiment.

The musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge is set in Sheffield, and includes a scene in which several folks in one apartment in the Park Hill estate partake of and comment upon a bottle of Henderson’s. It’s a reference which amused the West End audience I was a part of, which suggested to me it was a local delicacy, but known enough to humor the rest of the country.

Thing is, though, the scene in which the same bottle is commented upon, it is in fact being passed around by three parties who are unaware the others are there. It is mocked at a party in the 2010s, received with minor disgust by recently arrived Liberian refugees in the 1980s, and liberally splashed onto dinner by a miner in the 1960s.

Last week, I was having coffee with someone I hadn’t seen in some time. They asked me what I was working on and when I told them it was about three generations of my family, all taking place at the same time in one hotel room, he asked me if I had seen the movie, Here.

I said I had not, but that was familiar with the graphic novel. And he’s not wrong, because I do believe McGuire’s original version for that was printed RAW (see Here: graphic novel) had a profound effect which stayed with me. But he also could have said it reminded him of Standing at the Sky’s Edge.

Here’s the thing, I am going to be transparent about this – which is odd, because I don’t generally like to talk about the writing while it’s happening, before it’s produced, and I'll tell you why. On more than one occasion I have had conversations with critics and found my words used against me in their write-ups, and that's irritating, you know?

So, what I am currently working on is actually a play my mom wanted me to write years ago. She found my grandparents’ love letters from the early 1930s, and thought they were lovely and that there might be a play there. And they are lovely, but I found no obvious plot.

They were source material, however, for a paper I wrote in pursuit of my MFA a few years back, after she passed, and I began investigating my ancestry in earnest. And that paper led to an actual play script, one which took place in four different hotel rooms in four different years.

It may have been the comic strip that inspired the scenes running concurrently, and maybe it was the musical I had recently seen. There’s a song in my new script, too, an idea which I may have intentionally or otherwise stolen from Cloud Nine or maybe the film Magnolia. All I know is that I needed a song there.

Anyway, I recently ordered a four pack of Henderson’s Relish. It was a lot cheaper to get the four pack, and I did wonder how long the other bottles would be sitting on the shelf, but we’re almost done with the first one. I put Hendo’s on everything.