| To: vocalist Subject: Re: First Bad Review Date sent: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 14:55:36 PST Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>
>From: "Sara Clout" > >Hello listers, I am in need of cheering up as I have had my first bad >review. "During the band's set a dolled-up opera singer slinks onstage and >vomits >over two songs"
>From the viewpoint of one who has been on the OTHER side, here are possible causes of the bad review (other than a bad performance):
1)The show started more than 20 minutes late, with no explanation. 2)The reviewer had to sit on a nasty folding chair that left his back screaming for mercy. 3)He just paid his income tax. 4)He's genuinely stupid, ignorant, prejudiced, whatever.
Me, I would usually give the artists the benefit of the doubt, unless the show bored me silly or was genuinely stupid, ignorant, etc. But I can second the poster who said that you sometimes can't tell that the critics all saw the same show! There was one play I reviewed on the Walnut Studio series in Philadelphia, which was also reviewed by the two daily papers. One liked the play, and one thought it was dreadful. Me, I thought the play was dreadful, but pretty damn entertaining all the same.
And I was once in a show (a comedy about the Holocaust) which one critic called "theatrical vomit." But that only reflected what the actors were saying backstage!
Elizabeth Finkler mightymezzo-at-hotmail.com
"An enemy can partially ruin a man, but it takes a well-meaning and injudicious friend to really finish the job and make it perfect." --Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson"
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