Critics

Who needs critics? Word of mouth works better. And I speak as a one-time critic who went to about three plays per week. I had the idea that I was doing something important, letting the general public know what was good in the theatre and what was bad. I'm not at all sure that many people read me, and those who did, I imagine, didn't take much notice of what I wrote. Though someone did say to me once "I'm glad you gave that show a bashing because I too thought it bad". She was looking for confirmation of her view of it from someone she believed would have the qualifications to make a sound judgement.
Qualifications? I didn't have any. When I enquired about doing some reviewing for a certain newspaper, the features editor who had read my letter saying that I had done some work for a local magazine and that I had written a couple of plays (unproduced), said "you seem to have the right qualifications" and tried me out.
I think I was pretty honest in my reviews. Too honest possibly since I got banned from one theatre in South Wales for being too critical (and probably too humorously cynical).
You can't trust critics to tell you which plays to go and see - especially with prices as they are, through the roof - because their views vary so much from paper to paper, mag to mag. Can you believe Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph when he says of "Faust": "though this often works as decadent spectacle, it seems a shabby way to treat one of the great masterpieces of world drama", and when Benedict Nightingale of The Times says of the same play: "(they) may be sacrificing narrative clarity for spectacle but O boy, what spectacle!"?
Nightingale gave the show 5 stars, Spencer gave it 2 stars.
Probably I'd lean towards Spencer since I once reviewed a play by Turgenev that Nightingale had given a tremendous boost to, yet I found it dull, poorly acted and tedious.
No, critics won't help you decide which play to see, all they can do is write a report of it from their point of view, which may be interesting or may be garbage.