Critics

Thanks "London Bobby" for your remarks on Max Miller (see comment in Blog below on Miller). I agree with all you say, yet I still have a little soft spot for critics since I was once one myself. I would attend the theatre for a play or musical - or even opera - with the wish that I would enjoy it; but so many times I'd come away disappointed. Sometimes it was the performance, sometimes the play itself. No doubt, as "London Bobby" suggests, there were times when I wrote that the play was rubbish when it was evident that the audience enjoyed it. The thing is that criticism is a personal appreciation. Charles Spencer, in The Telegraph this week, gave a rave review for the new production of "Hair" but said that his wife could not be dragged along to see it because she hated pop music. It would be no good making her a pop music critic and, the trouble is, when you are a theatre critic, there is a lot of stuff out there that is just simply not to your taste.
I have read many reviews of theatre by both Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph and Benedict Nightingale of The Times and often they are at loggerheads: one may give a play five stars while the other gives the same show one or two stars. Criticism is not founded on scientific principles; it's more of a "taste thing". I hardly ever agreed with Bernard Levin but I could'nt resist reading his articles. And this is a thing you can say about reviews: it doesn't matter so much how many stars that have been given but how the critic has analysed the play and, more than anything, how well he has written about it: the review can be looked at as an essay, interesting to read though not sacrosanct.
I think I must be one of about three people in the country who does not find "Noises Off" funny. I know, I know, it's brilliant. It is brilliant in its construction and one cannot but admire it for that. But funny? No. Yet Benedict Nightingale wrote today that when he saw it first he and his wife creased themselves laughing.
You see, it's all a matter of taste. Probably he has good taste and I have bad. Yet I find Max Miller funny which surely means I have good taste!