Matt Trueman: Theatre critics need more space and time

Next Tuesday, when they dish out Critic of the Year at the annual Press Awards, it won’t go to a theatre critic. There isn’t one on the shortlist. Hasn’t been for ages. Of the six shortlisted hacks this year, three are foodies (though AA Gill doubles up – TV/dinners), one’s art, one’s pop and one’s Craig Brown, ostensibly a book reviewer but basically just Craig Brown. In five years, only one theatre critic has made the cut: The Evening Standard‘s Henry Hitchings was shortlisted in 2011.

Theatre’s had winners in the past – roughly one a decade since the awards began. The last, and make of this what you will, was Quentin Letts in 2009. Charles Spencer got two as the Telegraph‘s first-stringer, as did Letts’ much-loved predecessor at the Mail, Jack Tinker. Go back 40-odd years, and Michael Billington got the gong.

But it’s hard to see where the next might come from – though Susannah Clapp’s exquisite Observer columns surely deserve recognition. Not because there aren’t some great critics writing on theatre for Fleet Street’s best, but because the culture of theatre criticism so works against them.

Look at this year’s list and two things stand out. First, the Sundays dominate. All but one of the writers works on a weekly basis. Even Alexis Petridis, the Guardian‘s pop critic, tends to only review one album a week. The rest is blogposts and interviews. Second, they write at length – all with at least 700 words to build up a head of steam on a subject. They’re all brilliant writers – Marina O’Loughlin on food, Petridis on pop, critical bliss – but their papers allow them to write.

Theatre can’t really compare: mostly, it’s a daily turnover with half the words. The two go hand in hand – no-one can deliver 1,000 words of poised prose to a next-day deadline five times a week – but neither is conducive to the best critical writing or thinking. With print journalism in its death throes, theatre criticism is more squished than ever. In some papers these days, reviews can be as little as 250 words. There’s only so much you can do with that.

Theatre criticism has its disadvantages. Its timescale is far tighter – preview DVDs of television shows, private views and screening sessions give other critics extra thinking time. For theatre critics, press nights are like a starter’s gun and everyone races off to file ASAP. In America, critics go into previews and file ahead of an agreed embargo. (After CumberHamlet, you can understand why producers remain reluctant to replicate the model here, though it does happen sometimes.)

Economically, too, it suffers by comparison. Film and music is available worldwide, meaning reviews can attract a global readership. Theatre, however, is necessarily local. Short-lived too: only directly relevant for the length of its run. Albums, films, visual art – these things stick around. If you were an arts editor, where would you put your budget?

When I was starting out, blogging for my own site and writing the odd freelance review, I used to bemoan the state of mainstream criticism. Why, I kept insisting, can’t it be better? Why does so much of it stop short or skim the surface? Why is it so reliant on formulaic structures?

After a year in this job, I get it. The daily grind of criticism is a different beast entirely – a frustrating one sometimes, but one with its own particular purpose.

Criticism, like this, becomes a question of stamina. It means taking a deep breath and diving in day after day after day, show after show after show. You’re trying to do the art-form and the artists justice, trying to serve the reader with the information they need and trying to pin down your opinion as frankly and as readably as possible – all with the pressure of an imminent deadline looming down on you. People pore over our words, scrutinising every sentence – and rightly so, no excuses – but the experience of writing doesn’t often feel as controlled as all that.

It’s why the best theatre criticism exists online, free from the pressures of deadlines, word-counts and press night schedules, free from obligations to the general reader, too.

But it’s also why I so admire those that make it work in the mainstream media, and those, like our own Michael Coveney, that have made it work for so long. And why, every now and then, one decides to redouble one’s own efforts.