Reviewers

I cannot believe that two well known London theatre critics can have two diametrically opposite views of the same show. O yes I can: it happens all the time.
Take Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph on "Anthony and Cleopatra" at Stratford: "Michael Boyd directs a fast, gripping and amusing modern-dress production..... and there is a fizzing chemistry in her (Cleo) relationship with him (Tony)." Now take Patrick Carnegy writing in The Spectator: "In this deplorable new production it is not just Anthony who's taken leave of his senses but Michael Boyd, its director.... What madness can have overcome the brilliant director of the "Histories" sequence? This show is worthy neither of him nor of Stratford."
Then we have two other critics with a different show called "A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky". Tim Walker in The Sunday Telegraph has nothing but praise for the play: "I am delighted to be able to say that my least favourite theatre (Lyric Hammersmith) has finally put on a play that I find admirable in every respect." Whereas Lloyd Evans in The Spectator has an entirely different view: "Unable to find a good playwright, it has commissioned three bad ones to show their talentlessness in a single work....The characters are a collection of self-pitying autists and soup-brained posers.... One wonders what the Lyric is up to. They hire a trio of halfwits to scribble a plotless muddle. They load it with a cast of 11 underused actors..... this cascade of lexical trivialities written by a panel of inadequates...." Etc etc etc.
Maybe he had the flu when he saw it like I did once a long time ago when I reviewed a play in Cardiff called "Fanshen" after it had been given rave reviews in London. I thought it just dreadful. It was about workers in a commune in China, if memory serves me right; it was gruelling stuff, not a chuckle within throwing distance. Not even a smile! OK so I had the flu; that might have helped to make it one of the worst theatrical experiences of my life. I'm afraid that reviews do sometimes depend on the mood you're in when you get there. But the reviews quoted above seem genuine takes on the plays that were seen and it's hard to see how they could be so contrary to each other.
I made "Fanshen" my marker against which I judged other rotten productions e.g. "this play was dreadful but not as dreadful as 'Fanshen' ".