Professional reviewers are rightly banned from experimental or developing shows, but it's always open season for citizen reviewers
If you want to see a sign of the changing times, you only have to poke around on the web for reviews of Katie Mitchell's production of Lucy Kirkwood and Ed Hime's Small Hours at Hampstead theatre. There are reviews from a number of bloggers, including There Ought to be Clowns, but despite the high profile of those involved in the production ? a one-woman show with Sandy McDade as a sleepless new mum desperately trying to make it through the night ? there are no reviews from professional critics. This is because Hampstead is treating its downstairs studio as an experimental space. Critics are welcome to attend Small Hours and other shows in the season, but are barred from reviewing it (the show itself can only accommodate 25 people at a time, and sold out both in the initial run and when it was extended last week).
In principle, I don't have a problem with this. For years BAC and other venues have been regularly running scratch nights with minimal or free ticket prices, and I'm quite often invited to sharings or works in progress. I wouldn't dream of reviewing such work, although I might refer to it in blogs and other writing. Reviewing work at too early a stage can be just as damaging as not reviewing it at all. For every young company ? such as Curious Directive, whose promise glimmers among the flaws of Return to the Silence ? are those whose futures (both artistic and financial) might be compromised by too much attention too early, and who simply need time and space to grow, away from prying critical eyes.
Theatres are well aware that critical eyes can help, too: Jerry Springer the Opera was developed over a long period of scratch performances, to which ? as it became apparent BAC had something special on its hands ? the press began to be actively invited. I reckon Katie Mitchell could probably take it on the chin.
But the Hampstead situation it does throw up the kind of curious anomalies that happen in the age of Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere and all the rest. While professional critics are bound by a professional code ? we are invited to review and observe embargoes ? bloggers have no such constraints, as Andrew Lloyd Webber discovered to his cost during previews for Love Never Dies. Julie Taymor's disaster-hit Spider-Man musical on Broadway has been widely reviewed, but mostly by bloggers or columnists ? although professional critics are beginning to run out of patience at being made to wait. The rules of engagement also become blurred when, as increasingly is the case, some bloggers are given free tickets for certain shows but in other instances must buy their own.
I don't see that as a problem either, because anything that makes theatre more talked and written about is fine by me. But I do think theatres such as Hampstead need to think about their policies in a changing world. The National Theatre Studio, which understands the importance of developing work in a supportive atmosphere, is completely off-limits for critics, but is also off-limits for paying audiences and therefore blogger too. Work is shared, but in front of an invited audience of friends ? and, most importantly, peers. That seems to me to be the crucial difference. At Hampstead, instead, audiences are being charged a tenner to see a show that's not open to review by some people but is by others.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/jan/26/theatre-blogs-reviews-critics
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