Quote of the Day

 “Till of late years England was as free from Criticks, as it is from Wolves.”
-  Thomas Rymer, 1674

Isn't that lovely?  An Edenic England.  So I suppose the Criticks arrived here in the States with the Mayflower?

Now (having poked the critics with that stick - was that wise?), come on out and judge for yourself: Circle Theatre's production of Hope and Gravity opened last night!

Public domain image from wpclipart.com

It's a minimal set and, I hope, an "ethereal" one... with an elevator I'm particularly proud of.  (And you wouldn't believe how long something so simple took to do.)

New Architecture Critic

A piece of good news in this morning's Dallas Morning News: a new architecture critic starts in April.

Finally!  Someone - Mark Lamster - to step into shoes left empty by the late, long-time Dallas critic David Dillon.  He seems like a distinguished critic... I'll be curious to read what Mr. Lamster has to say.

Talking about architecture is a good thing.

HERE's a link to his webpage.  (Photo from his profile at Architizer.)  An earlier post on criticism HERE.

Importance of Critics

Sure I grouse now and then about critics...  Theater people do.

Eventually everyone gets a slighting review and it's no fun when a critic doesn't like a show you've invested a lot of time, thought, work, and blood into.  It's downright maddening when the critic just flat misses the point.  (That sometimes happens.)  Then again, we all enjoy a good review.  But - beyond the tender-ego issues - critics are important.

They keep artists honest.

No one ever intends to be a lazy designer or to phone-in a performance.  No one plans a flop.  Self-respect, honest craftsmanship, and peer pressure all encourage good work.  But there's no motivation quite like public praise or the public pillory!  Bad reviews work like the ol' throw-stones-at-the-miscreant system of justice: if praise is motivating, so is bruising.

For this reason, I wish architects had more critics.

I especially wish local architects had a critic.  The late David Dillon was once on-staff architecture critic for The Dallas Morning News, one of the few in the country.  He was especially good at explaining the complex relationships between real estate interests, politics, power, and money that shape large building developments.  He also had a good sense of architectural form and design, I thought.  Perhaps his reviews were a little too often about Important Buildings Elsewhere or Important Out-of-Town Architects (not helping Dallas' inferiority complex any), but he did  hold local architects to higher standards.  He made Architecture (capital A) a topic for discussion.  Which helps.

I'm saddened to say that New York City, the country, indeed the world-wide architecture conversation, has lost a very good critic with the recent death of Ada Loise Huxtable.

Photo of Ada Louise Huxtable from Atlantic Yards Report

Starting in The New York Times in 1963 and writing her last piece for The Wall Street Journal last month, Ada Louise Huxtable helped set the tone of architectural discussion for half a century.  She was an early advocate for historic preservation.  She wrote several books including Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard? which I read in school long ago... and which remains wonderfully biting and relevant.    She even received her share of criticism of her own work - including a Pulitzer and a MacArthur "genius" grant, which is not bad.

We need more critics this good.


Read this this article HERE for an interesting discussion of the role of architecture critics today (well, 2006).  Or look in the Set Design Archive  HERE  for my earlier posts on "Critics & Reviews."

"A Golden Age"

Experts and critics seem to agree: 2012 was a great theatrical year in Dallas.

Congratulations to everyone involved!

I'm pleased to see that many theaters where I work are cited for terrific productions, as were many, many actors I've had the privilege to work with.  And I'm thrilled that five of my shows appeared on critics' various "Best Of " lists: The Whipping Man at Circle Theatre;  The Diary of Anne Frank at WaterTower Theatre; and Ruth, Collapse, AND The Beauty Queen of Leenane at Kitchen Dog Theater.

Pictures in the Paper

Part of the set designer's career is to keep track of what "the papers" - nowadays mostly blogs - have to say about your shows. Luckily, reviews for my now-on-stage productions have been pretty good, which is always a relief.

(Many theater people say they never read reviews... yet somehow they always know.  Psychic, you think?  Me, I read the reviews.)

Here's a sampling:

Boeing, Boeing at WaterTower Theater

Sketch for Boeing, Boeing at WaterTower Theater

HERE's a pretty detailed review of WaterTower's Boeing, Boeing at CriticalRant.com

Ruth at Kitchen Dog Theater

And a review of Kitchen Dog's Ruth HERE at The Observer.

Next up - Circle Theatre's Mistakes Were Made.  I thought the show and the chief actor were electrifying in rehearsal!  Guess we'll see what the critics have to say soon... opens Friday.  Tomorrow!

Or, better still, buy a ticket to one or all of these fine shows and form your own opinion.  

On Reviewers

I just found this apt paragraph in (of all places) The Chronicle of Higher Education, from an article by Arthur Krystal called "Should Writers Respond to Reviewers?"

"Kingsley Amis, in a moment of weakness, allowed that a bad review could spoil a writer's breakfast, but not his lunch. Really? Recipients of unfavorable reviews suffer heartburn for months, perhaps years. And why shouldn't they? Reading a stupid review is a little like being mugged. You feel violated and outraged and want nothing less than to see the perp caught and publicly flogged. But what can you do? Everyone knows that disgruntled authors are advised to keep quiet, since any rejoinder can only make them look peevish while at the same time calling even more attention to a harsh critique."


(Read the rest of the lively article HERE.)

This is true in theater too.  The actor, director, designer or other toiler in the vineyards of Dionysis has to try to ignore a bad review.  Well, or go get drunk - no doubt the real reason ol' Dionysis is god of both theater and wine.

Dionysus by Carravaggio, public domain image

Drama Critic

From a conversation about the beloved film Young Frankenstein versus its Broadway musical version came the single most pointed theater criticism I've ever heard:

"It reminded me of Disney On Ice."

Critics

This blog will not talk too much about critics, but I was amused to see that one who wrote a good review for Boeing Boeing liked my custom-built sofa because it was suggestive (in every sense)  of a particular masculine body part...

This illustrates where art critics both can come in handy and be misleading: because that idea never occurred to me.  (That I hadn't thought of it and the critic did says lots about both of us, I suspect.)  Once it's pointed out I can sorta see it.  Given the play, it's wonderfully appropriate.  Being alerted to this fact - if it is one - might add to understanding and enjoying the play - which is part of a critic's job.  So...

A.  Is this critic just reading into this work aspects of that critic's worldview?
B.  Is the critic seeing something my unconscious mind put there?  Consciously, I just remember calculating that a sofa was needed there of about that size and shape, sketching variations, making a requested change, then feeling that the final shape was "right."
C.  Don't over-think this!
 Or
D.  All of the above.

I gotta go with D.