I was pretty new to the Broadway world once I began working in it. I hadn't really grown up being too aware of that many shows or that many actors in shows. I was always obsessed with Judy Garland, though.
I would hate to think of the theatre world without critics. Without them, we'd not have the record of each season.
I don't mean to be oily, but critics are very much part of the theatre.
We depend on the critics to give us a glimpse of what happened. Bernard Shaw championed Ibsen, who got the most terrible notices for his plays. Kenneth Tynan championed young writers, and as a result, the theatre has changed radically.
Theatre critics have no special access to the truth. And there should be no objective truth to art.
You know, they wanted to do a Broadway album and every show was kind of a bomb. There was no music at all.
The power of the print reviewer is one of those urban myths. There have always been shows that slipped under the critical radar to become popular successes: 'Tobacco Road', 'Abie's Irish Rose' and our old friend 'Spider-Man', which got the worst reviews in theatre history and is still apparently going strong.
I was in the original cast of 'Wicked', and that got a bad review in 'The New York Times,' and it's the most successful thing that's ever been put onstage.
