The cliche was always that 'everybody's a critic,' but it becomes truer every day. Long before reviews appear in the traditional outlets, you can now usually discover - somewhere in the thickets of the Internet - reactions to shows from people who've seen them in previews.
It would be so much better if the critics would come, not on first nights, but on last nights, when they could exercise their undoubted flair for funeral orations.
While in some quarters it is felt that the critic is just a necessary evil, most serious-minded, decent, talented theater people agree that the critic is an unnecessary evil.
Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
Don't be taken in by the guff that critics are killing the theater. Commonly they sin on the side of enthusiasm. Too often they give their blessing to trash.
The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights, actors and audiences - a figure dreaded, and occasionally comic, but never welcome, never loved.
Plays can outlast even the opinions of the chief film critic of The New York Times and that reviews, although they feel devastating in the immediate moment, are not remotely as significant as the significance you endow them with on the day that they appear.
There are television critics, movie critics, and theater critics too who I like and who I follow and I get genuinely bummed when they don't like something that I've written because I usually agree with them.
