COMMENTARY : The N.Y. Rupture Over Hare’s ‘Secret Rapture’

Every once in awhile, my cat rouses from dyspeptic lethargy, arches her back, stiffens her tail and launches herself across the room at the great and invisible Rat of Rats that she has conjured up in her sleep.

The Broadway theater community--as confined, overfed, undernourished and as dependable a secreter of hairballs as any apartment cat--periodically goes into a like frenzy with the New York Times theater critic. Watched, deferred to, applauded toward--when I had the job, one producer used to seat himself and his guests next to me so I would be sure to notice their spontaneous enthusiasm for what was going on upon the stage--the Times critic is transfigured every few seasons into theater’s own Rat of Rats.

As this is written, Frank Rich has been allowed to reassume his corduroy jacket, tuck his tail out of sight, let his nose subside from pointy to round, and take up once more the task of staying sober and awake in the theater four or five times a week, making no friends, keeping his sensibility fresh and his irritability manageable and trying to give a clear account of what he has seen and what he thinks about it. The latest frenzy--headlines in Variety, a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal, long pieces in the Village Voice and 7 Days--seems to have died down.

It was splashier than most. British playwright David Hare wrote an angry letter to Rich after the latter had given a strongly adverse review to Hare’s “The Secret Rapture,” which opened on Broadway. Rich had seen the play in London and loved it. He still loved it; but now Hare had taken over as director and was using a different cast. Hare’s staging rendered the play’s virtues invisible, Rich wrote; the director turned out to be the playwright’s “worst enemy.”

Among other things, Hare’s letter accused Rich of closing his play--it did close a few days after it opened--by his harshness. Holding the power he did, Hare argued, Rich’s duty, in the case of a “serious” play, was to couch whatever criticisms he had in a loving fashion. He implied that Rich was power-hungry. He had made himself emperor of the New York theater, at the cost of reducing this empire to ashes in which only baubles and overfinanced musicals could survive.

To which Rich replied with considerable heat that his only duty was to tell the truth as he saw it. To mince words; to tell people to see a play because it was serious, to conceal that it wasn’t very good, would be of no use. Theatergoers are not gullible and they don’t go to the theater on a worthiness kick.

There is an issue of principle here. Who or what is a critic supposed to serve: his/her own aesthetic conscience, the reader’s, the serious theater, the commercial theater? That last category may seem far-fetched, but there have been, and still are, critics who fit in it, writing more or less along the lines of: Isn’t Broadway Fun! Variety’s treatment of the latest flap was nakedly commercial; Rich was assessed simply in terms of the number of “pans” he had delivered. Nothing was said about the quality of the plays he had panned.

In addition, there seems to have been a certain manipulation of the dispute by the theater Establishment. A lot of faxing was done; the play’s Broadway press agent tried to get Rich to meet with Hare. Rich refused; it is hard to see what such a meeting would have accomplished apart from putting even more pressure on the critic.

As for Hare himself, he undoubtedly has a real argument. Theater of genuine artistic intent lives under continual threat. Surely, when a serious play reaches Broadway, the critic should support it. Particularly when the critic admires the play. Couldn’t Rich have gone easier on the performance?

Perhaps--or at least, perhaps his language could have been a trifle less waspish. Critics get tired, and they get sore. And one thing that gets them especially sore is to see a play, which they have seen done so well, wasting a rare Broadway opportunity by being done much less well.

But a critic can do only one thing: write what he/she sees, feels and thinks. If the critic is wrong--and we all are, often--at least it is an error that doesn’t muddy the water. What does muddy the water is, one: trying to second-guess what your readers will or will not like; and, two: trying to second-guess what is in the interests of Theater Art. Nobody knows that, not even Hare. Meanwhile, the little light the critic has to contribute is not served by indulgence. You don’t strike a match on butter.

As for tone, a review lives by its phrasing. It is a minor art but an art, nonetheless. It is not a weather report. Critics who write a prudent bureaucratese may, if unfavorable, do less harm than one whose language flashes. But they also do less to fix and elevate what moves them and, hopefully, will move the world.

Of course, there is no American critic so nakedly exposed as the Times’ theater critic. Insofar as theater is a New York affair--and it still is, unfortunately, to a great extent--it seems to be the only voice that counts. This is true nowhere else--not in books, music, art or film. There is some power to it, though none to enjoy; the theater critic makes no money off what he praises, and, if he is sensible, as Rich is, he doesn’t stay around to be praised, loved or invited to parties.

To be the solitary voice is a burden, not a privilege. I agree with Rich that its duty is to speak as freely as if that burden weren’t there. Yet it is impossible to ignore; it takes a toll even on a Rat of Rats. There are things that can sometimes be avoided: personal attacks, excessive vituperation. Yet again, often they can’t be. Critics are not a passive partner to the kicking, high-stepping, pirouetting bit of theater that comes out at them. They must high-kick and pirouette right back.

What licenses all this, of course, is that I was Frank Rich’s immediate predecessor. I too was built up as the assassin of the theater. The difference was that the man who was then the New York Times editor sided with the critic’s critics and invited me out after two years. It seemed to have caused pain both ways, personal and institutional. Rich has received exemplary support ever since, and he will undoubtedly be around as long as he can stand it.