The stalls can’t have been more than a third full. I don’t know what the circle was like, but there didn’t seem to be that many people streaming down the steps after each act. That is an enormous shame.
What was interesting, however, was quite how many practitioners – mostly young – were in the audience. There were directors, actors and designers all over the place. That’s only taking into account the faces that I recognised. (This is both a good thing and a bad thing. I’m still sure that Three Kingdoms will have an impact on British theatre, but it deserves a wider, non-insular audience.) Afterwards – in fact, even in the interval – you could feel the same buzz that’s been buzzing around Twitter all week. You could hear the sound of eyes popping and minds blowing.
(This is also reflected in those reviews that describe the struggle of writing about Three Kingdoms and talk about the need for a new language or form to do so, particularly Jake Orr’s at A Younger Theatre and Catherine Love’s reflections.)
Last week, if not for the first time then certainly with unprecedented universality and vehemence, internecine warfare broke out amongst critics. In the blue corner, yawning, the mainstream, print critics; in the red, spitting rage, those of us writing online. That so many of the pieces online castigated mainstream criticism for its failure to champion something that their writers believed in is both telling and unusual. (UPDATE: Maddy Costa has written a Guardian blog on exactly this subject, which was published almost simultaneously.)
Now I don’t really go in for the whole ‘dead white males’ thing. For starters, it’s not nearly as true as it once might have been, and beyond that I think that the vast majority of critics worth their salt take their roles very seriously. But, the dividing line – with a couple of honourable exception – is related not to publication or politics as so often, but to age. Broadly speaking, the two camps fall either side of 40. A group that goes up to 40 is too wide to be dismissed as youth. If mainstream criticism hopes to have speak to and for the majority of its readers, then – to quote Stephen Sondheim at the most inappropriate of moments – “something just broke.”
Here is a piece of theatre that needed recognition; that needed some backing that comes with a degree of profile, backing capable of making an impact and, basically, persuading people that it might be worth their time and money. As the very vocally positive responses have proved, there is most definitely an audience in this country for this kind of theatre. More than that, I’d hazard that it’s the kind of theatre that could break through theatre’s identity problem. You know, the one we all witter on about; the ‘why don’t young people go to the theatre?’ one. More than this, it deserved some credit on a platform where that credit might really count, where it stood a chance of connecting with the unconverted.
Three Kingdoms is undeniably ambitious, it is undeniably astute and it is undeniably powerful. It is also undeniably different. (In fairness, it is also undeniably difficult. It was only second time round that I felt like I grasped it’s ending and mechanics with genuine precision.)
Given how many easy comparisons its possible to make (from Peter Brook to Filter Theatre), the snub by mainstream criticism looks increasingly like stubbornness and a statement of intent. It leaves the sense that we know what the theatrical ideal looks like and Three Kingdoms isn’t it. The irony, of course, is that Three Kingdoms entirely anticipates that – and, in fact, that’s what I set out to write about here, but I seem to have become distracted.
I’ll say this: Mainstream criticism is close to falling out of kilter with too great a swathe of its readership. It is growing old and, as such, is on the verge of betraying both its readership and its form.
Theatre exists in a consumerist structure. It needs to sell seats in order to remain feasible. To do so, it often needs good responses with a high-enough profile to have an impact. Reviews still have a further reach than any individual piece of word of mouth, on or offline, despite the fact that the overall probably outweighs them for influence. Theatres need good reviews. The critical culture inevitably has an impact on the programming of culture. Where that critical culture retains such fixed ideals, it limits and indeed stultifies the artform it exists alongside.
Criticism must adapt. At present it is struggling to do so. It must be both one step ahead and one step behind its subject. This is how critics – whether embedded in process, and I’m still not entirely converted to that, or not – can become collaborators. It must spur its chosen artform onwards by whatever means possible. It must be both carrot and stick. Criticism must demand more and demand better of its chosen artform, even if it is not the critic’s job to identify precisely or concretely how. Whenever a concrete ‘more’ or ‘better’ is achieved, however, criticism must recognise it with all its might.
Last week mainsteam theatre criticism had the best chance to do so in a very long while and, taken as an entire species, entirely failed to do so. More’s the pity.
Photograph: Ene Liis-Semper
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