Photographs By Jay Fram
In nursery school, we learned the rule: Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it. But performing-arts critics seem to be the exception. They wield a lot of power—especially in St. Louis’ limited media market—and few performers are brave (or stupid) enough to defend themselves or their peers. That doesn’t mean that our local actors, directors, producers and musicians don’t carp and moan among themselves, of course—in fact, most of the people we consulted were willing to let us listen in, as long as we played Bob Woodward to their Deep Throat. (One interview subject asked us not to reveal her sex: “They’ll know who I am!”) Paranoid or astute? Whatever the case, given the obvious power differential between the critics and the critiqued, we decided to keep all sources anonymous, even the ones who had nothing but nice things to say. After all, being labeled a suck-up is almost as bad as being labeled a crybaby.
THEATER “When Newmark started at the Post, she wasn’t very good, but she’s become an excellent critic. In her Sunday features, though, sometimes she comes up with these esoteric theories. It’s very Seven Sisters: I think she’s presuming that her audience is interested in the same things she is, and they’re not. But [her predecessor at the Post] Joe Pollack was much, much worse. He compared every production in town to another production he saw a long time ago—10 paragraphs of theater history and personal reminiscence.”
“[KWMU-FM critic] Joe Pollack is an institution. I’ve seen him sleep through a performance, but I’ve seen [Post-Dispatch critic] Judy Newmark doze off, too. I’ve also heard her be very rude, talking loudly to a friend during a performance. But I don’t mind her taking off her shoes.”
“The reviewing scene has changed a lot since Pollack reigned supreme. He was a smart and hardworking guy but, at times, insufferable. Theater, movies, wine—what didn’t he cover? And between his stuff in the Post and his show on KWMU, it was a monopoly. He was interested in new forms, like performance art, but rarely gave it airtime. By blocking access, it was like he was denying any stamp of approval. Now there are a lot more people writing, but no one has his influence. The Big Daddy syndrome?”
“They all have their pluses and limitations. [Post-Dispatch critic] Gerry Kowarsky is as conscientious and hardworking as they come, but it’s hard to know sometimes what he really thinks. You want to say, ‘Loosen up, Ger. Give us the goods.’”
“[Riverfront Times critic] Dennis Brown works hard, but half the time sounds like he is giving a lecture based on Internet research. There is a difference between providing useful background and showing everyone how smart you are.”
“[Riverfront Times critic] Deanna Jent is smart as a whip. She often really gets what’s going on, maybe because she has a solid academic background in theater. But it is a problem in a small community like St. Louis to have an influential reviewer directing at theaters she also covers. Not cool, really not, if for no other reason than public perception.”
“The reviews that really make my blood boil are the ones that show contempt for the audience. Dennis Brown does this some-times; Judith Newmark doesn’t.”
“Dennis Brown strikes me as an informed, perceptive and articulate guy. Sometimes he has rather odd opinions, but he’s knowledgeable. And he doesn’t pull his punches. If something is bad, he’ll say so.”
“When Dennis Brown writes well, and often he does, he’s terrific. When he’s trying to prove how smart he is, it doesn’t serve the work. Deanna Jent also directs, which I think is a conflict. She approaches her review as if she’s directing the piece.”
“I see Judith Newmark as sort of the mom figure, the one you want to impress. She once panned one of my productions, but I loved the review because it showed a real passion for theater.”
“So many, if not all, of the local theater critics somehow think that explaining the plot is reviewing the show. A reviewer is supposed to talk about how the production works. I don’t think any of them really distinguishes between the writing, the acting, the directing and the design.”
“St. Louis critics have a very strange habit of pretending everything is professional because it sounds better. They do certain theaters and, decidedly, the St. Louis audience a disservice by refusing to distinguish between professional, semiprofessional and nonprofessional companies, which changes the expectations.”
“Disclaimer or not, Judy Newmark should never be allowed to write reviews for the Muny, because her daughter’s in the chorus.”
“Most people feel that Paul Blake has destroyed any artistic quality at the Muny, and Newmark has not had the guts to call them on it—but it’s not because of her daughter, it’s because she treasures the civic institution too much. She needs a more skeptical eye about the work.”
“Dennis Brown is hard on the Muny, and, the rumor was, they pulled his tickets. I think they’ve made peace this season, because he’s doing features. But there was a time when things got tense.”
“Virtually none of the theater critics are up to date. They don’t know how writing is changing because of the economics. At the moment you are allowed only seven actors; it’s an unwritten rule. With seven actors you cannot tell a traditional big story, so playwrights are making more use of light and sound—which most critics don’t pay any attention to. Playwrights double characters and fracture time—and the reviewers get confused.”
“So many of the local critics aren’t trained for what they do. Kowarsky, it’s obviously his hobby—he dearly loves theater. I just wish he would dearly love theater and go to New York or London a little more often.”
“One thing I like about St. Louis is, not many people read the critics. The theater community does, but most people have figured out that one person’s opinion … is just that. New Yorkers are a much bigger bunch of lemmings than St. Louisans when it comes to reading the critics.”
“Joe Pollack has been a staunch supporter of St. Louis theater. He’s the elder critic in St. Louis. He hasn’t always written favorably about our work—early on, there were things he didn’t get—but that’s human nature. If you don’t get it, you negate it.”
CLASSICAL MUSIC & OPERA “I think [Post-Dispatch classical critic] Sarah Bryan Miller is a very good journalist, very good at searching things out and a good reporter. Still, it’s a shame there aren’t two classical-music critics in town. With all due respect to Miller, not everyone agrees with her.”
“After [former Saint Louis Symphony conductor] Hans Vonk left, there was no music director for a long time. Why Sarah Bryan Miller took on the music-director role as her responsibility, I don’t know, but she did.” “When I first came here, there was a critic with the Globe-Democrat who knew a lot about music, but he refused to say anything critical. He might as well have been writing our press releases, and we all knew it. When Miller says something is good, it means a lot more.”
“Bryan Miller does know music—although I don’t like her work.”
“Miller’s biggest fallacy is that she doesn’t acknowledge that the people she singles out for criticism sometimes move beyond her original assessments. As live performers, we all have better or lesser performances, but what does picking out an individual to criticize serve? It’s not the role of the critic to define the policy of the institution.”
“At least Miller is a classically trained musician. I can judge a professional figure skater, even though I don’t really care if they’re on the inside or outside edge. But when I hear a professional’s opinion, it reinforces my own opinion, and I begin to discriminate a bit, get more out of it. It’s not so helpful when they point out, ‘Hey, that skater just fell down!’”
“I have yet to find a local critic who notices, for instance, that somebody is directing for a proscenium on a thrust stage. Opera Theatre’s Rigoletto ignored the thrust and put everything center stage, where the really misdesigned set was, and Sarah Bryan Miller never mentioned it.”
“I went to the dress rehearsal of Gloriana, and I didn’t know enough about its history to fully appreciate it. An article by Miller helped me appreciate the opera. The major function of a critic is to let people know what’s going on in the arts and help them understand it. That piece was a good example.”
ROCK AND POP “The RFT offers nowhere near the print space for local music as it does for local theater and St. Louis’ obvious favorite [pastime], eating. When national bands are reviewed, it is generally for a particular ‘edgy’ demographic and can be willfully in-crowd–obscure. Playback St. Louis does a reasonable job focusing hard on local efforts in all the lively arts that are simply not given the time of day elsewhere. Their shift toward emphasizing the national at the expense of the local is an unfortunate trend, however.”
“Reviews feed musicians’ egos—even bad reviews. Of course, good ones are preferred, but not being noticed at all is more common and much worse.”
“Playback picks three local bands every month in ‘Three to See.’ They may review another local band aside from that, but, in general, local coverage is very limited. The RFT occasionally writes something about a local act, but it’s never any longer than three to six sentences anymore ... Occasionally someone at the Post will write about a local band. These articles, though infrequent, are often more thoughtful and a lot longer than those in any other local source.”
“I’ve thought for quite a while that making the ‘scene’ usually gets more cred than writing and performing good songs. The scene is your typical dog-and-pony show. That is a shame, and the local media are usually a part of this, too. It seems like you see more local stuff in Playback than anywhere else.”
“I suppose the summary of the RFT—and, likely, all alt-weeklies—is that they are too busy selling advertising to worry much about things like journalistic ethics. They do get it right once in a while, but it’s the blind squirrel who can find the nut among the gay personal ads.”
“Playback is the friend who tries too hard. You remember that kid in school who wanted to hang around you and your friends but was always one step too early with a punchline and one beat too late with a laugh? All those kids grew up and now write for Playback. If these folks spent half as much time practicing their craft as they do promoting it, they wouldn’t need a brochure/fanzine to push it on the bored-beyond-tears fans in the area.”
“I think reviews should consist of constructive criticism. Sadly, most reviews and such are really just another form of entertaining the readers—‘Oh, wasn’t that clever!’ I don’t read the RFT or Playback, because it’s all so pointless: What those people write has nothing to do with what I do, so why bother? I guess what I honestly think is that if reviewers could create art, they’d be doing that instead.”
