A snapshot of what's wrong with the perception of theater.

Found via Theatreforte: Someone asked the Onion's A.V. Club recently why, among their coverage of film, music, books and video games, they don't review theater (third question down). The answer is, of course, that theater is inherently local, and while their mass media reviews can be shared among the ten cities in which the Onion is distributed, they don't have the local staff in every city to do justice to theater.

But then there's also this:

Those [mass media] reviews will also stay relevant for years to come in the archives, since the films we're reviewing today will mostly be out on DVD eventually, and most of the books and albums will remain continuously available—through the secondary market, if nothing else.

A stage play, on the other hand, is by nature ephemeral; once a given production folds, it ceases to exist, so reviews have no staying power, and they wouldn't mean much long-term.

That's an interesting, and dismaying, perspective: in the internet age, when a publication's archives are expected to create revenue just like the current issue on the stands, theater loses value to the publisher. Again.

Also of note are some of the responses from the comment squad. Among the expected, only-my-tastes-matter "who cares about theater" types, one commenter claims that

No publication has any business doing theater reviews unless it is a local one AND printed more than once a week.

Why more than once a week? Sure, monthly reviews wouldn't be much help, but most weeklies print reviews—I can think of six weeklies in Chicago that cover theater (some better than others, of course, but they all cover shows the dailies wouldn't bother with).

Another, after calling theatergoers "pretentious twats," says

... that and the fact that I've never seen a theater show advertised with a ticket price of less than $35.

Must be reading the Tribune.

And finally, a rebuttal from the poser [heh] of the original question:

Wicked, Proof, Avenue Q, Doubt, Spamalot ... are the reason I wrote the question I did. There are a lot of theatre shows that tour all around the country - certainly enough to fill a weekly column if this was desired. Yes, the performers and crew will be different each week, but the other audio/visual components will be the same and totally reviewable on a national level.

And this is from someone who claims to like theater.

Also, two short notes:

1) Am I the only one who finds it curious that the screenwriting and directing debut of playwright Stephen Belber, best known for taut little dramas like Tape and Match, will be a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn?

2) I didn't see any new plays this weekend; instead, I was at Lollapalooza. It's not a theater review, but if you'd care to read a piece about the music festival that I wrote for Transmission, the music blog by Gapers Block, you can do so here.

Comments

[Rob Kozlowski]

And didn't David Auburn go straight from "Proof" to writing the screenplay to "The Lake House?" Ouch.