Artistic Injustice

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OPEN UNIVERSITY APRIL 9, 2007

Artistic Injustice

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by Robert Brustein
With so many dreadful examples of social and political injustice in the world, why
bother to complain about another case of artistic injustice in New York? To sit by
indifferently while a work of art expires from lukewarm reviews is hardly
commensurate with failing to protest a genocide in Darfur. Yet, in some way, the two
abuses are related examples of negligence and neglect. If the first is a blot on our
moral nature, the second is another drop of acid on the decomposing skin of our
intellectual and creative lives.

Consider The New York Times, an organ on which so many of us depend for
clarity and balance. It is ironic that the same newspaper that editorializes so
eloquently against corruption in the political administration now bears so much
responsibility for helping to corrupt our culture. Look what has happened, for
example, to the Sunday "Arts and Leisure" pages, once popularly known as the
"Drama" section, and now often indistinguishable from the "Style" section of the same
newspaper. In the past, it used to routinely publish numerous background features,
reviews, and idea pieces about theatre in New York and elsewhere. Today, its front
page is largely devoted to columns about the careers and collisions of rock, rap, and
hip-hop stars, when it is not running multiple stories about "American Idol."

Now I love gossip and popular entertainment as well as the next guy, but isn't there a
place for serious theatre in this Sunday section any more? References to plays have
been relegated to a column or two on page five, unless there is a big numbing
commercial musical or some media-soaked British import like The Coast of
Utopia lumbering towards Broadway. I realize the changes at the Times
are part of its effort to keep financially afloat when the print media are failing to
attract enough readers. And yet, despite its abject bow to cultural illiteracy, The
New York Times continues to regard itself as the maker of theatrical standards.
The New York Post recently reported an angry encounter between the
playwright David Hare (whose The Vertical Hour was recently backhanded by
the Times) and the paper's managing director, Jill Abramson. Hare accused
the Times (correctly in my opinion) of having little interest in theatre, and
even less in plays. Ms. Abramson allegedly replied, "Listen, it is not our obligation to
like or care about the theater. It is our obligation to arbitrate it. We are the central
arbiter of taste and culture in the city of New York."

The most depressing thing about this statement is that, whether or not Ms.
Abramason said it, it is true. In a one-newspaper town, the Times wields the
scepter. But this imperial posturing often results in an arrogant, autocratic attitude
towards the arts that is proving very demoralizing to artists. Another recent example
was a behind-the-scenes flap regarding that paper's coverage of Oliver
Twist, a theatrical adaptation of Dickens's novel co-sponsored by the Theatre for
a New Audience (TFANA), the Berkeley Rep, and the
American Repertory Theatre (ART). As the
founding director of the last-named company, I am probably in no position to even
mention the production, and you are at liberty to discount my remarks as special
pleading. But I no longer have more than a marginal connection with the ART (other
than teaching a course in acting and dramaturgy at the Institute), and you won't often
find me defending its recent shows. I am breaking my silence now because this
Oliver Twist is widely agreed to be an electrifying evocation of Dickens'
masterpiece by the English director Neil Bartlett, with a strong musical score and a
brilliant American cast. It originated in London where it was highly praised, and has
now been positively received by most of the New York critics--the major exception
being the New York Times reviewer.

This Oliver Twist was part of a season series at the Theatre For a New
Audience on "the Jew as Outsider," which included The Merchant of Venice
and The Jew of Malta (F. Murray Abraham playing Shylock and Barabas). For
that reason, Jeffrey Horowitz, the artistic director, made repeated requests of the
Times to send its primary off-Broadway critic, Charles Isherwood. Horowitz
believed that the same man who reviewed the theatre's first two productions was in a
better position to understand the relevance of the third, and the continuity of the
season, than someone who would treat Oliver Twist as a thumbs-up,
thumbs-down commodity. The Times said Isherwood was busy. Horowitz
requested Ben Brantley. He was busy, too. Obviously, the Times was also
busy--too busy to provide an intelligent background feature on dramatized Dickens,
or on the treatment of Jews in English drama and fiction, or on the Outsider in
Theatre and Society--or on any subject that might enlighten us about the issue of
minorities or the purpose of theatre. It was too busy even to include any reference to
the production in its Friday Openings and Preview section.

Nor did the Times--which had just run a feature called "The British Are
Coming To Play American Roles"--bother to notice that 13 Americans had just
returned from playing British roles in TFANA's
production of The Merchant of Venice at Stratford-Upon-Avon (its second
invitation by the Royal Shakespeare Company that was highly acclaimed in the
London press). Heartsick, Horowitz made a pest of himself, writing letters and
making phone calls, and took the unusual position of refusing to offer press tickets
until the time, during any of the subsequent 21 performances, when those critics
might be free. (Moved by Horowitz's distress, I also wrote a letter to Ben Brantley,
urging him to see the production.) The Times responded by sending a third-
stringer who devoted 361 words to the event in a patronizing and inconsequential review.

Even that reviewer's praise was condescending ("among the most competently acted
productions on or Off Broadway"--consider the word "competently" in that context).
Reasonable people can differ about the quality of a work of art. What is less open to
argument is the way the Times often ignores or dismisses the more
significant artistic achievements of the year, while exalting the sensational, the
tawdry, and the inane. (Sarah Ruehl's A Clean House, a superficial domestic
sit-com featuring a cartoon Latino maid who wants to be a standup comic, solicited
one of Isherwood's few positive reviews this year.) What is also inmarguable is the
way the Times often reduces a production to its function as a saleable or
fashionable commodity, while still continuing to anoint itself as "the central arbiter of
taste and culture in the city of New York." Unlike Jeffrey Horowitz, I don't believe that
Charles Isherwood, so dismissive of so many major plays and playwrights during his
tenure at the Times, would have written any differently about this Oliver
Twist. There hasn't been a Times reviewer covering important
productions in a serious fashion since Mel Gussow left the paper in 2003. No wonder
so many people are turning away from the New York stage when producers, in an
effort to please the Times's critics, offer such disposable trivia at such
exorbitant ticket prices? Who at that newspaper is now preparing to write the obituary
of the American theatre it has been helping to bury through artistic injustice and
critical neglect?

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