Critics vs Bloggers
An interesting piece on Radio Scotland Cafe programme this evening about who to trust when reading a review of a performance? The professional critic, or the bloggers?
It is a good question. I do read what critics say, and some I trust more than others. It is a long-term relationship that one builds: if you find one critic tending to agree with you over time, what they say can be very useful. But not always, and I do find myself at odds with the general opinion at times - usually when all the professionals have given something 5 stars.
I do tend to find that the music critics can be especially hard on performances. It is more complicated than theatre, and the critics do get down to technicalities fairly readily. If I am giving my thoughts on music, I just tend to concentrate whether it was enjoyable, and if the rest of the audience had a good time.
So: critics or bloggers? I suppose both together give a good guide. It is a bit like using Trip Advisor to find out about what a place is really like. Although critics will win hands down on experience, perhaps bloggers have it on authenticity. It’s a close call.
April 17, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I think the balance has shifted and will continue to shift in favour of bloggers and non-traditional critics as a reliable source of the quality of a production. Traditional ‘Press’ reviews of theatre these days are so restricted both in number and length that many are almost pointless. I regularly find myself reading a ‘review’ which gives a summary of the plot, a list of what the actors have been in before and a mention of the tone/style of the play but am left with no impression as to whether it was actually any good or not and if any of the performances stood out. I appreciate it’s down to column inches but that’s why bloggers have an in-built advantage to start with. Their next advantage is that they don’t just go to see anything that happens to be on - they (or at least ‘we’
choose carefully what to see and only go to productions we have a strong hope of enjoying and are prepared to pay for (theatre blogging can get very expensive!). Everything we write about should be to our taste and that can give us higher level of enthusiasm than a critic on an assignment. But as you say, it means you have to find a blog with a similar taste to your own.
Your mention of TripAdvisor is spot on. I’ve had many great hotel experiences through it and wouldn’t dream of booking up without checking the website first. If there is one disappointment I have about View From the Stalls it’s that more people don’t have the confidence to share their own thoughts on a show by adding a heckle to our ‘review’.
But our current professional critics have more to offer us than their reviews and I greatly enjoy much of their theatre related journalism. It seems that by selling an article as a feature/interview etc they are able to gain much more space to deal with the upcoming show in depth - and that’s where the value of their years of experience can be brought into focus.