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Susannah Clapp – The Observer
It has been the noisiest squabble in the stalls for years. A few days after Emma Rice's production of A Matter of Life and Death opened at the Olivier, Nicholas Hytner, the National Theatre's artistic director, went on the attack. The show had been panned by some overnight reviewers: Charles Spencer in the Telegraph thought it wheeled out all the 'tired cliches of physical theatre'; Nicholas de Jongh of London's Evening Standard thought it 'spectacular but far from novel'. In the Times, Benedict Nightingale was lukewarm, though the Guardian's Michael Billington gave it a guarded welcome. It was, said Hytner, misogyny: women directors always get a rough time from the 'dead white men' of the critical establishment. He thought the female reviewers of the Sundays would respond more favourably.
Sort of, as it turned out. I loved the show; Kate Bassett of the Independent on Sunday liked it very much, with minor reservations. The Mail on Sunday's Georgina Brown was appreciative, but cooler. Meanwhile, the attacked attackers blazed back at Hytner: 'Balderdash and piffle,' said Billington; 'a mad rush of blood to the head,' said Spencer; 'bilious' and 'a declaration of war,' proclaimed de Jongh, who wishes to make it clear that he's not dead.
So, was it misogyny? Well, no one can really believe that critics tot up the number of wombs involved in a production before deciding on its merits. Still, there's no doubt that until recently the theatre has, for all its flounce, been not so much blokey as masculine, a place in which women were looked at, scripted, directed and designed by men. And commented on by them.
When I started writing for The Observer 10 years ago, I was struck by the scarcity of critical female faces at first nights and turned to another reviewer for elucidation. He explained, with quiet pride: 'It's rather a macho job.' Macho? Theatre critic? Surely you don't have to be Rageh Omaar to sit watching a play with your pen poised? 'Well,' he elaborated, 'you spend a lot of time wandering around at night on your own.' So that's one definition of a critic: a scowling tart.
Most critics (and there are more women among them now) will see their job as mixing tipster, recorder (theatre performances and productions are perishable), encourager and excoriator. With that goes some recognition of overall trends in the theatre. Which is where Hytner's outburst has been useful: it has focused attention on the difference among critics not just about a particular show, but about a whole range of work.
A Matter of Life and Death, which tells its tale not only in dialogue, but with songs and mime and aerialism, is an example of movement theatre, which until now has been mostly seen on the Fringe, where it has regularly disproved the idea that theatre audiences are always over 40. I've had some of my best experiences in the theatre watching it. Over at the Telegraph, Charles Spencer has had some of his worst.
Spencer blames Rice's fellow adapter, Tom Morris, an associate director at the National, for importing the genre into the South Bank, steering it 'into a dead end when it comes to supposedly "experimental" theatre projects'. I see Morris, who, when running BAC, a mile or two south of the National, mentored one of Hytner's early big statements, in Jerry Springer – the Opera, as essential to the National's rejuvenation. If the National didn't take on board the vocabulary of movement theatre, it would not be a truly national stage, any more than it would be if it gave over all three auditoriums to people swinging on ropes.
It's easy to forget how radically this bit of the South Bank has been opened up over the past four years: it was much blander and more homogeneous when run by Trevor Nunn. Hytner has taken under his wing small companies such as Punchdrunk, which created the revelatory, and much extended, Faust in a Wapping warehouse and, in doing so, associated the National with one of the most vivid threads in current theatre: site-specific work. He's encouraged the remaking of stalwart old plays, as evidenced in the current production of Rafta, Rafta. At the same time, he hasn't ceased to stage de luxe productions such as The Alchemist.
In doing all this, he's reflected a diverse and golden age in the theatre. In the past 10 years, the stage has gained, in the Globe, a space which has shown at a stroke how a Shakespeare play can be a popular event. In the past five, it has responded more incisively to current events than either movies or television. The documentary dramas of the Tricycle have become a political force and the model for a new transparency in acting, as has last year's most galvanic play, Gregory Burke's Black Watch, which combined verbatim and movement theatre.
The work of designers – just look at what Ian MacNeil created for Vernon God Little last week, or Lizzie Clachan the week before for Absolute Beginners – is soaring. There's scarcely a play which doesn't have a knock-out performance and scarcely an unused industrial space which doesn't house an interesting play. New writing – and very young writers – are beginning (they've been the Cinderellas of the stage) to flower.
This current spat won't do the theatre, so often derided by non-theatrical columnists, any harm: there it is, discussed in pages usually given over to Lily Allen's prom frocks. Still, it only touches on the real threats to the independence of critical opinion. The composition of theatre critics is hardly a closely guarded secret. We're actually rather publicly displayed: unlike film and art critics, we don't go to private views, but can be seen at press nights, where practitioners and audiences can figure out whether we're male or female, alive or dead. In any case, the greatest impediment to clear-sightedness is probably not genetic. It's personal involvement. Friendship, enmity and rivalry don't just prevent reviewers from speaking up: they stop them seeing what is there. That isn't a malady confined to theatre critics. As most literary editors will testify.
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