Critic

 

Real theatre took a back seat midweek with a special viewing of The Critic, the self-absorbed melodramaturge of opinions read by directors and actors alike, very occasionally prospective audience. His legend goes before him in the form of bland generalisations, bewildering prejudices, and unnecessary slights, such is the armoury of this fearless skewer with his motto of take no prisoners. The arrival could not have been more anti-climactic. Those expecting the prancing pronouncement, the swaggering sweep, were met instead with a bustling busybody in misshapen suit, a mezzo-pretzel with half an idea, half a laugh, his fly at half-mast. Such is the surprise element required in all good theatre and The Critic did not let us down. Sidling to the bar he ordered a lemon breezer to get in touch with his inner demon and focus his remaining brain cells. Never were eyeballs enflamed with more lordly fervour or malign intent as he slumped into his crimson plush Seat 13 Row Q, the throne of the god. Slump was convincing but glare left much to be desired; glaze, perhaps? Fidgeting with the program notes he reminded himself of the plot, citizens of that whole nation of pretenders who are people like us. His shoelace wished to exit stage left. The internal soliloquy that accompanies his every review show was switched on, turning the sweetest performance into words that leave a taste in the mouth. Some have wondered how he found his way into theatre in the first place, having so few good words for it, and even more wish he would find his way out again via the fire exit. Act 2 was not his best moment, The Critic bent slovenly, with head resting on his fist through stagecraft to make angels weep, but inspired in him bristling snorts and unselfconscious grinding of back molars, responses turned into acrimonious English by the time he was in the taxi home. Why he ended up on this side of the curtain is a missing chapter of his biography, the lacuna a playwright could dramatize and probably has, so much of theatre being the things not said at the time. Interval was an interminable if revealing performance of small talk for The Critic, catching up with retired Shakespeareans, avoiding the latest Chekhov, and that Molière on speed, before his understated return to form in the half-slump pretzel position. His mind made up before the denouement, he longed for the days when giants walked the boards and he could hold a part, alas a time that is neither youth nor age. Given the ratio of time spent in this posture, he should have reviewed the carpet. The night was young as theatregoers flooded out into the bright lights, their heads filled with inklings and imaginings from actions seen and heard, while for The Critic it was a shambling direction uberwards while his mind homed in on the worst aspects of the spectacle and started sharpening adjectives. His audience awaited.    

       

Photograph: the costume Bridie made for Peter Quince, the playwright within the play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, her school play in 2019. Sometimes with reviews we wish someone would review the reviewer, an idea I have taken literally in this case. A childhood memory is of my father grumbling on Monday or Tuesday mornings at The Age review of the weekend’s concert by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, a concert he attended invariably. The Age reviewer was Felix Werder, a composer and musician who made it his business to write consistently negative reviews of the MSO, whatever the program and whatever the standard of the performance. Werder’s reviews were so predictably lacking in any positive remarks that they became a joke, but my father took it all too seriously. Werder was a kind of bête noire at our breakfasts.