In the spirit of burying Spider-Man the musical, I'm reposting something I wrote here on January 2011. It's called "The Completed Vision." At the time, there was much debate over when critics should review Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, as it had an extensive, hilariously abused preview period. Charles Isherwood made the case that critics shouldn't review something until the artist believes it is finished. I explained that, in fact, this is not a privilege granted to smaller productions with smaller budgets.
Ah, memories.
Read the original post here.
THE COMPLETED VISION - January 2011
Charles Isherwood dives into the "to review or not to review
Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark in previews" discussion with this
blog post on the New York Times.
He writes a defense of the practice of withholding reviews of Broadway previews in this way:
"...if
a critic’s job is to assess the total merits of a work of art – or at
least a gaudy chunk of entertainment – reason also argues that the
entertainment should be allowed to achieve the completed form its
creators had envisioned before judgment is rendered. Painters do not
show their work until they have deemed it finished, although the
undiscerning eye (and even discerning ones) might not be able to tell
the difference between a finished Jackson Pollock and an unfinished one.
Film companies run test screenings of uncompleted films to see how
they fare with the public.
Works
of theater are, thanks to the preview process, vulnerable to early
public assessment. But if anything they are more in need of extended
gestation. They don’t properly live until their metabolism has been
tested, and almost always tweaked, by interaction with a live audience.
Lines of dialogue, bits of business, even whole scenes that seem
surefire in rehearsal can fall flat when they meet the objective eye of
an impartial audience.
For this
reason the preview period can be viewed, at least from an aesthetic
perspective, as the crucial fine-tuning process that can sometimes make
or break a new play or musical. And with the price tag of production a
musical on Broadway now in the tens of millions of dollars –
“Spider-Man”
has set a new record at $65 million – the possibility of employing the once-standard
out-of-town tryout to work out the kinks in a show is rarely financially viable."
Isherwood
notes that with price tags this high, producers who hope to recoup
their investment must get Broadway priced tickets sold as quickly as
possible - a dubious defense of charging over $100 a ticket for a show
that is (by his own words) unfinished and not open to the press. In
short, investors won't spend top dollar on a musical if unwitting or
curious consumers can't be charged early and often.
The primary
reason that Isherwood cites for not reviewing a production, though, (and
I suspect he's ambivalent about it from the tone of the piece) is that
theatrical performances need a chance to breathe and grow and find their
footing in front of a live audience. "Reason argues" that a play should
achieve the "completed form the creators had envisioned" before it is
ethical to judge the work. The work, in essence, must be judged on it's
best day, all the kinks worked out. A 'painting' should not be shown
before the 'painter' deems it worthy.
His arguments are
pretty straightforward and sound. All this hoopla about previews
shouldn't be that remarkable. It is, after all, about an outlier:
Spider-Man's producers are pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable
to demand from the press and from audiences.
But, Mr.
Isherwood's standard for when a play should be reviewed made my eyebrows
go up. For hundreds of plays produced under the guidelines of the
Showcase or Seasonal Codes all over New York City...the small,
uncommercial works, the weird stuff, the "Indie" theater... that
standard does not apply.
Plays with budgets as low as $20,000
can scant afford more than sets and a publicist and stipends for their
Equity performers and rental costs. (For example, my production of
Brandywine Distillery Fire
at Incubator Arts Project cost around $12,000 for a two week run.) With
that budget, they might even squeeze out some decent production values.
They will receive a run of ... 25 performances? At their longest. If
the
New York Times or
Time Out New York
go to see them and review them, it is likely they will come to the very
first or second public performance. Whatever benefit that these small
productions might receive from months of extra work, whatever
"completeness" they have yet to achieve before a reviewer check them
out, is not in the budget.
The reason is just as financial for
small producers as it is for Broadway producers. Smaller producers
raise as much money as they can, use much of their own money as well,
and they can't afford even a week of "previews" for a four week run.
Instead, they get their plays up as quickly and cheaply as possible,
trusting in their luck, in their perseverance and in the talent of those
involved. They hope that a few good reviews will garner enough
interest and paying customers to either broaden their industry profile
or break even, or both.
These practitioners, I think it's safe
to say, largely create works that can rival the artistic mert (if not
the scale) of superhero musicals or dancing versions of feature films.
Still, they are rarely reviewed at all, and when they are, they're given
scant time to "achieve the completed form their creators [have]
envisioned."
This isn't an argument that the
New York Times,
or any other major press, shouldn't come down below 34th Street or past
9th Avenue and see what there is to see. I'm glad they do, and I think
they have shown they care a great deal for the theater created beyond
the limits of Broadway. (I won't, though, go so far as to treat these
Off-Off Broadway reviews as community service. A part of covering the
arts is
covering the arts.)
I'm
also not arguing that a reviewers should use kid gloves with a
production because it is making due with less. If a production is set
before an audience for their time and attention, it should be judged as
complete. Caveats in this area help no one, not the artist who is
struggling to be heard, nor the critic who is making an assessment.
In
short, I'm not decrying the treatment that Off-Off Broadway productions
receive. I am highlighting this disparity to challenge the notion that
those in previews have an unassailable right to create their "art"
unmolested by the judgment of the press In fact, they have
purchased that "right."
One could produce more than 3000 showcase code productions with the entire budget of the
Turn Off The Dark.
That doesn't mean people shouldn't spend money on Broadway- I honestly
don't mind if a commercial producer raises funds for a commercial
production and then tries to make that production a commercial success.
What I object to is treating expensive public rehearsals as
untouchable and holy,
even as those of us who are making cultural artifacts for breadcrumbs
are given far less time and room to breathe. If those of us with light
wallets are expected to withstand the creaky process of a single dress
rehearsal before a major reviewer stops by; I think a $65 million
musical about a Marvel Comic book character directed by Julie Taymor
with songs by Bono and the Edge...can withstand a few blog posts after
several months of performances.
I think we all realize that
these things are not equivalent, and that's the nature of the
marketplace. All of us whose budgets consist of next-to-nothing still
work overnight to bang sets together and throw our best at the critics,
firm in the belief that they will see us on a good night, with generous
hearts, and give us the legitimacy that won't come from pay. Heck, even
if the
New York Times shows up
and gives us a swift kick in the ass, small productions know that we
will have risen above the noise for a moment, and we're grateful for the
amplification. If we fail to live up to our "ideal," sometimes it's a
failure of imagination, sometimes of will, sometimes of resources. The
preview option, though, is simply not in a tool in our toolbox.
That's
why, I guess, I'm skeptical of the argument that defends previews as a
way to serve Art with a capital "A." It feels more like an elaborate
game of "Mother May I?" The standard mapped out ("never review the play
until it's completed to the producer's satisfaction") is neither
universally applied, nor could it be feasibly - at least not until the
Showcase Code is adequately reformed. In the end, there's a brilliance
to the profit model of charging your audience to watch you develop a
show and keeping the press at bay as long as possible. Let's just not
pretend that, in all cases, it's in service of more than protecting an
investment. The rest of us aren't given such generous allowances.
