Spoiling the ship – should critics avoid spoilers in their write-ups?

Please note, this blog does not contain any spoilers – unless you’ve not seen Romeo and Juliet. 

Like so many of the best shows out there, Next to Normal has a rug-pull moment – a big twist that can cause shocks, or even gasps – amongst the audience. Going in cold, it hits you like a blistering spark of caustic emotion.

But when, in the fresh light of a coffee-fuelled early morning, a critic is faced with trying to write 500 words based on their experiences, how do they sum up their opinions authentically without giving some of the game away?

The debate of critics adding spoilers is always a tricksy one. Say too little and audiences won’t have enough context to work out whether the show’s for them, and the write-up feels meaningless. Say too much and you run the risk of being accused of undermining a surprise plot beat.

The issue comes with a wad of blurred lines. How clued up should one assume an audience is? It would be strange for a critic to refrain from discussing Romeo and Juliet’s death, or Nora’s departure. But what about the end of Les Misérables, a show that’s been around for decades? Or the end of A Little Life – based on a book that has been a global sensation for years?

If done glibly, it may at best cause some consternation. At worst, it may put off audiences from reading critics’ opinions in the future for fear of having their night ruined. By robbing the audience of the same potential shocks and thrills, would critics be undermining a punter’s time, and in the process giving them a fundamentally different experience to the very one being reviewed?

Critics do not, of course, wilfully want to go out and ruin the end of a plot – but, as was pointed out by critic Lyn Gardner a few years back, sometimes the beans have already been spilled by the omniprescent discussions on social media. She goes on to say that a militant approach to keeping spoilers away from write-ups can become “the enemy of good criticism”.

In the case of Next to Normal, many critics have kept mum, while others haven’t. Whether there needs to be greater input from producers (as is more common in the film world), advising critics on what they’d prefer is omitted, is a possibility. Simply adding a little warning note could suffice. Perhaps a reckoning and change is required – there may be those on both sides of the debate spoiling for a fight.