Will Social Media Bury Future Butchers Of Broadway?
Playwright A.R. Gurney inadvertently gave marketers an object lesson in the power of social media – not with one of his plays (“A Cheever Evening”; “The Dining Room”, the Pulitzer-nominated “Love Letters”, among others) but rather with a letter to the New York Times which ran earlier this week.
Gurney, responding to a story on peer review in academia, wrote: “I wonder if the shifting of ‘up or down’ judgment of one’s academic work from a few peers to a wider variety of opinions on the Web may also be the case in the contemporary theater, where a few reviewers in print no longer determine the future of a play or a musical.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/l30review.html
Media has come a long way since the time when a fan campaign failed to save the original “Star Trek” series. In cinema, fan-based sites such as Rottentomatoes.com carry increasing amounts of weight in helping moviegoers choose their fare. And creators of enthusiast television shows are known to turn to fan sites for both reaction and inspiration.
The influence of a single powerful critic has waned since Times movie reviewer Bosley Crowther campaigned madly against 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde” – a campaign so vicious and unrelenting that, it has been speculated, it contributed to the film initially being pulled from distribution.
But even back then cooler heads could prevail. Competing reviews (Time and Newsweek lauded it, as did Roger Ebert) resulted in the film ultimately being given wide release. It subsequently earned several academy award nominations, as well as two statues (for best supporting actress and best cinematography).
For his part, Crowther was removed as a film critic in 1968. Although it was never flat-out stated, his objection to “Bonnie and Clyde” was rumored to have been his downfall, as it showcased what was seen as his lack of touch with modern movies. Ebert went on to wield one of the two most famous thumbs in movie criticism – a device that has since diminished in influence with the death of co-thumber Gene Siskel.
Gurney’s medium is the floodlights, however, not the silver screen. And even here, the power of a single critic has dropped. Current New York Times op-ed writer Frank Rich was a theater critic for the paper between 1980 and 1993. During his tenure he earned the sobriquet “The Butcher of Broadway”, for his ability to close a performance with a single negative review.
The paper’s current crop of theater reviewers, while certainly speaking from among the most prestigious perches of criticism, cannot claim a single bully pulpit. Avid theatergoers have a variety of consumer-driven sources of reviews, ranging from forums on Theatermania.com to Facebook pages and the fans who “like” and “suggest” said pages.
Who gets to tell Gurney?
