Critics & Producers Clash Over First Night Changes???

Producer Sonia Friedman’s proposed changes to the West End’s first night system – in which all the national critics attend a show, alongside relatives of the cast, financial backers and other industry figures on a single opening night – have sparked a furore in some critical quarters. The suggestion is that critics should attend different preview performances alongside regular punters. A news story in the Observer newspaper this past Sunday said that the move – which is due to be introduced for Friedman’s upcoming productions of By the Bog of Cats and Whose Life Is It Anyway?, starring American screen stars Holly Hunter and Kim Cattrall respectively – is a response to the growing power of the critics. One of that fraternity, the notoriously hard-to-please Nicholas de Jongh, answered back angrily in last night’s Evening Standard. "I think the underlying, unspoken intent is a sign of a fresh stage in the long-standing psychological battle between producers and critics,” wrote de Jongh. “The idea is to subtly try to pressure us into changing our habits and views. We represent, the theory goes, a haughty, ivory-tower, elitist minority who know nothing about public theatrical taste. We are play murderers who strangle at birth musicals and plays for which hundreds of thousands are yearning. What better time could there be to launch such a change when you have two big stars without much stage experience due to plunge into the West End pool?” However, he determined that he, for one would not be influenced by the reactions of normal theatregoers at a performance. “Theatre critics are not delegates or the human equivalent of a national opinion poll…. I am not going to be dragooned. I will not be intimidated into writing positive reviews because I find myself surrounded by a paying audience in raptures of ecstasy.” De Jongh also poured water on the idea that critics hold too much power, citing Becket, The Solid Gold Cadillac, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Friedman’s own production of Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Woman in White as productions which were still running despite largely unenthusiastic reviews. “The insistent, persistent fact of theatrical life,” he deduced, “is that individual critics, or even the pack of us in full cry, rarely have the power to make or break a performance.” He continued that though “our view is regularly rejected”, the duty of the critic is nonetheless “to encourage, enthuse and agitate for the health, vitality and relevance of the stage”.

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