Tynan's Anger

Watch this episode of Theater Talk very carefully. Michael Riedel, the instigator of most of the conversation, is not treating the death of theater criticism as a "what if" question. He's treating it as a given. If the aforementioned death hasn't happened already, it will, in Riedel's viewpoint. Very subtly, he manipulates the conversation to talk about the death of intelligent theater criticism and suggests that the rise of celebrity gossip, outrageous blogging (never mind the outrageousness of his column), and an A.D.D. culture will make the likes of Kenneth Tynan and Clive Barnes obsolete. There's a reason he's doing this: nothing would benefit Riedel personally more than exactly that kind of death.

The panel he assembled includes two critics who are in his pocket; Mike Kuchwara of the Associated Press, the only theater critic who benefits from critics losing their jobs, and Jacques le Sourd, who even Riedel himself has admitted is a close confidant and potential leaker. John Heilpern, for one, is not having any of it, and saves this panel from turning into an outright eulogy for a medium that isn't quite in the coffin. But Riedel wants you to believe it is. Because that would benefit Riedel.

Let's make one thing clear on Riedel: he is not a theater critic. Riedel is a gossip columnist for a trashy tabloid. He will trash shows in his columns, but those are reviews in the same way New York Post covers are editorials. He mainly succeeds by being the only voice for the inner workings of Broadway—for theater geeks, that is exceedingly rare, interesting information. But that he writes about a more obscure field doesn't reduce the fact that he embraces the worst traits of tabloid journalism. He will be nasty instead of being insightful, trade on rumor and shallow personal aspects of the theater scene rather than critical judgment, and he's probably more corrupt in doing so than we like to think. Riedel writes for the New York Post, a publication most good New York theater liberals don't trust with anything else; in fact, they usually despise the paper like nothing else in the New York media. So why should they make an exception for Riedel?

When you think carefully about the source of the eulogies, most of the immediate talk of the death of theater criticism that has gotten the theater press and blogosphere in a tizzy stems from Riedel himself. Figuring himself as a theater critic, Riedel wrote a column in October that bemoaned the dimished role of the theater critic in the internet age. He said nothing new, and I took pains to point out that theater criticism is far from dead. The reason the idea took off, however, was because the theater press figured that if even Riedel is worried, we're in trouble.

Listen, here's what everyone's already known about Riedel even before the death of print began. He's an egotist, unafraid of controversy and utterly devoid of empathy; a careerist, and a manipulator. He is not only willing to trample over anything and anyone to get on top—he takes active glee in the process. These are all the classic traits of a tabloid journalist, and they're the traits that make the rest of the the traditonal journalistic world avoid tabloid journalism like the plague. Riedel just happens to have an Ivy League education and concern himself with a "high art" rarely privy to tabloid journalism anymore in the U.S.. All the conniving parts of his trade and personality are still there.

So I would venture to say that Michael Riedel is actively, intentionally manipulating the talk of theater press to bemoan the death of theater criticism more than actually cover theater. Why would he do this? So he can turn the overall discussion to the TMZ side of theater, maybe even integrate a bit of Hollywood scandal into the stictchings of Broadway "coverage." This would give him the authority in the theater world Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood currently have.

Watch that video, and you see that Riedel is doing exactly what I have just described in this discussion. Take this panel discussion as a microcosm of the theater discussion at large, and it's scary to think of how powerful Riedel would become if no one had the guts like Heilpern to stand up to him. Normally I don't call on spurned theater artists to fight back against their detractors in the press. But no journalist should instill a culture of fear over a community like Riedel has. It's time the theater community, of New York and the nation, learned to grow a spine and fight him. He's not the sharpest mind we have. He can easily be outwitted.

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Labels: Broadway theatre, celebrity gossip, john heilpern, michael riedel, new york, new york post, tabloid journalism, theater criticism

I suppose I should address David Mamet's diatribe in The Village Voice on his newfound aversion to the left wing. He is, after all, arguably the most influential American playwright of the last 25 years, and I'd argue that an introduction to his work is bound to fuck up the styling of most young playwrights for at least a few years (Oleanna pretty much permanently castigated me to critical aspirations). Still, I feel immensely unqualified to write about it, as I did not see Boston Marriage, Romance, or November. I would feel worse about this, if I didn't hear such nearly universally terrible things about the former two. The latter play had all the indications of closing the store on Mamet's career, but I think I was not the only one surprised when it got a glowing review from John Lahr and did exceptionally well at the box office (perhaps the result, as Ben Brantley put it, of being a "David Mamet play for people who don't like David Mamet.") But because I haven't seen these plays, I'll focus more on the politics and past cases of lefty playwrights gone right.

Mamet's long had indications of his right-wing leanings, even in his earliest work, which had a frank honesty towards the brutality of dog-eat-dog capitalism, be it real estate (Glengarry Glen Ross) or Hollywood (Speed-the-Plow). He also fiercely criticized political correctness in my personal favorite of his, the aforementioned Oleanna. Even when his plays were scathing critiques of the culture of capitalism, there was a sort of acceptance of capitalism's logic behind it all. The biggest indication of late, of course, has been his right-wing Israel book The Wicked Son and his rant on Hollywood in Bambi vs. Godzila. He hasn't just been a contrarian, he's been an outright reactionary. It's arguably what we've loved most about him. Now we just have direct evidence of the fact.

Michael Billington raises the absolutely worthy consideration that his dogmatic conservatism may be making him a worse playwright, as he loses the moral nuance that characterized his earlier work. He cites Kingsley Amis and John Osborne as playwrights who suffered after there newfound conservatism. As an Osborne devotee, I must raise a red flag here, because as John Heilpern pointed out in his recent biography, Osborne was always more contrarian than conservative, and he certainly never had a political mantra as direct as what Mamet has provided here. So, I guess to sum up, I'm dissappointed by Mamet, though not particularly surprised, and I don't particularly expect all that much from his later career. It was nice while it lasted.

Labels: ben brantley, david mamet, john heilpern, john lahr, john osborne, kingsley amis, michael billington, november, politics