LONDON THEATERS TAKE ON THE CRITICS

One of the theater’s favorite subjects is itself. Three backstage plays opened in the same week in London recently, including an early example of the genre, Sheridan’s “The Critic” (1779).

This features the immortal Mr. Puff, who aspires to writing tragedies but whose real expertise is buttering up the critics, here named Dangle and Sneer. With Ian McKellen (in ginger fright wig) as Mr. Puff, this enterprise struck the Daily Telegraph’s John Barber as “the funniest thing the National Theatre has ever done.”

On the same bill is Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Inspector Hound,” a sendup of two bumbling regional-theater critics named Birdboot and Moon. Michael Billington of the Guardian thought it “had grown funnier with time” (it’s dated 1968), but Barber called it “verbally overwrought.” What Stoppard play isn’t?

Down the block, the Old Vic took on an American backstage classic, Moss Hart’s “Light Up the Sky” (1948). Oddly, this hadn’t been seen in London before, and most of the critics enjoyed its wisecracks, with special praise for Robert Morse as the pin-striped producer of a play engaged in terminal tryouts in Boston. Kenneth Hurren of the Mail on Sunday voiced the minority opinion: “These are yesterday’s people.”

Vancouver’s Expo 86 draws closer (opening in May), but who is going to represent the theater at its World Arts Festival? The Stratford, Ontario, Shakespeare Festival has dropped out; so has the Shaw Festival; so has the National Theatre of Great Britain. All cited an inability to come to financial terms with the exposition.

Now it appears that Peter Brook’s “The Mahabarata” is also out, “because of fears that the nine-hour play in French would not be properly understood in British Columbia.” To be fair, this seems to have been Brook’s decision, not the festival’s. But one begins to wonder if there will be any international theater participation in Vancouver. So far, all that’s been announced is a local company.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK. British producer Michael White in his autobiography, “Empty Seats” (Hamish Hamilton, $17.50): “Wounds heal faster in the theater than in the real world.”