Reviewing plays and other daunting tasks - Denny Scott editorial

Every year around this time, my editor Shawn and I, occasionally accompanied by family members, take time to enjoy the shows put on by the Blyth Festival and provide a review for them. In this week’s edition of The Citizen, you will find my take on Drew Hayden Taylor’s Cottagers and Indians, which is currently in production at the Festival’s Harvest Stage at the Blyth Campground.

 

There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes (no pun intended) when it comes to reviewing plays, not the least of which are the different experiences that I have, even from Shawn, that might make my reviews more or less applicable to each reader.

 

Take, for example, our backgrounds. Shawn took a single drama class in high school, whereas I was involved a little more, being behind the scenes of a production or two. Shawn, who has been at The Citizen for a number of years longer than I have, has reviewed more plays here but, growing up in Huron County, I attended plays throughout my late teens and early twenties. What does that all add up to? Well, it means we have different viewpoints. Whereas he has put pen to paper to critically consider more plays than I have, giving him more comparisons to draw, my eye tends to go towards more technical aspects of the play like the costumes, backdrops, props and sets, resulting in those factors often playing a bigger part in my reviews. What does any of this matter? Well you need to know who is reviewing a play to know how applicable their review is to you. Will you even notice the lighting or the stage design? If so, we’ve got something in common and you may agree with some of what I feel. If not, you may find the praise or criticisms I levy regarding those aspects of the show of little use.

 

Then there’s the question of what the reviews need to do: should we be brutally honest at the risk of hurting a show, and the Festival, or should we strive to find the good parts of a play and write about those? I’ve rarely had to write a negative review, 
but as I was sitting down to pen my review of Cottagers and Indians, I thought back on the interviews I did with the cast and crew behind it and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have to compartmentalize those wonderful chats to provide a critical lens to review the play with.

 

I was fortunate in reviewing Cottagers and Indians because I did genuinely enjoy it, which is usually the case. However, there 
have been some plays that either missed the mark, in my opinion, or were simply written for an audience I didn’t think necessarily included me. In those situations I always felt like I had to walk a tightrope between providing The Citizen’s readers a fair and balanced review and trying to maintain a relationship with people I may be slighting through my writing.

 

Like I said, very little of this is specifically applicable to Cottagers and Indians. It was a fun play to take in, and a great way to get an idea of a serious issue in another part of the province. Reviewing any play (or any work of art from the culinary arts to the dramatic arts to even Shawn’s weekly stories), however, always brings up the same concerns in my mind, chief among them: who am I to be reviewing this?

 

Reviewing plays isn’t an easy thing to do, especially since, weeks to months earlier, we here at The Citizen have spoken to everyone responsible for what’s performed on stage from the playwright to the directors to the actors and, yes, the behind-the-
scene folks like the designers and crafts-people.

 

After talking to these people, it can be difficult to critique them and their work because you know them. It’s easy to critique a professional performer (or athlete, or politician, etc.) because you don’t know them and odds are you’ll never have to look them in the eye and explain your take on their work.

 

Getting to know these people can make it difficult to criticize their work, fortunately, there have been few times I’ve walked out |of a play with a desire to tell people to avoid it, but it can make it difficult to even present points of weakness in a play. That said, I have had to say a play felt unpolished, unfinished or even, in my opinion, not right for the Blyth Festival stage - it just hasn’t happened often.

 

Fortunately, with the focus of the Blyth Festival traditionally being on shows depicting events that you could actually see happening in Huron County, I haven’t had to admit that a play may find a better audience in a more urban setting or in 
another part of the province very often. That focus has spared me a lot of awkward conversations.

 

Regardless of the challenge that follows, the plays are almost always worth the time taken to see them and the reviews are an important part of what we do here, and one I’m happy to continue.