Sir Critic, Good Day
For many actors, the theatre critic is visualized as a murid creature drooling poison ichor between their ragged buck teeth, grasping pencils clumsily amid their absurdly long and razor-sharp ungulae. (You get the idea.) The reputation is solidified every time the beasts among them fill their fountain pens with venom of asp and set about to scar indelibly some hapless artist who would have been better off coming between a hellhound and its prey.
The reviews of XXX Love Act, as you probably anticipate from the above, are not all favorable. As often happens, I personally stand unscathed among the tattered, fleshy remains of my colleagues. Lovell Estell III (my God, are there two more of him?) of the L.A. Weekly – who was observed sitting with his eyes closed for much of Act One – complains that Cintra Wilson’s drama is ‘tawdry’ and gave our director short shrift, but left the actors alone. Les Spindle, writing for Backstage West, was less kind than that and definitively gored one of my fellow players. Spindle somehow got the bizarre notion that our omniscient choristers, one of whom is clearly Hunter S. Thompson and the other an androgyne in a blue disco suit, are supposed to be the parents of the protagonists, prompting one to surmise that the thread on his spindle is a bit loose. I should not heap scorn on the man, however, since he gave me a courteous mention.
Fortunately, we already had a triage unit set up at Company of Angels. Joey Gilbert needed some internal surgery to repair the major invasive trauma dealt him by Edward Spindlehands, but otherwise the injuries are minor cuts and scrapes with some nausea. Our producer and unfailing champion, Andrew Schark, was swift about drawing attention to the favorable notice we received on ReviewPlays.com, a website that often lobs naphta at our theatre.
One can also point out that at least we’re not involved with The Dukes of Hazzard, eviscerated by Kenneth Turan on NPR and in the Los Angeles Times. A savage review can be entertaining as long as it is someone else’s project.
The word for that is schadenfreude.
