"A perfect judge will read each work of wit/With the same spirit that its author writ," said one of my favourite Popes. I refer to Alexander Pope. That is from his 1709 Essay on Criticism.
It is full of favourites. “A little learning is a dang’rous thing. True wit is nature to advantage dressed. What oft was thought but ne’re so well expressed.
"Be not the first by whom the new are tried. Or yet the last to lay the old aside. "To err is human, to forgive divine. For fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Which brings me to the experience of being a theatre critic. As I was with the Irish Press for five years until 1995.
Attending so many productions can take its toll. Not least as about 80 per cent was dross. Keeping awake was greatly assisted by composing the review there and then as the standard became clear.
The primary duty was to the reader who might be about to waste his/her money, but this was tempered by a realisation that at any time the vast majority of actors in Dublin were out of work.
You learned to be honest without being savage. Most times.
There were stand-out moments. The first night of Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa. Similarly with Riverdance. And there was Frank Pig Says Hello, an adaptation by Pat McCabe of his novel The Butcher Boy.
Frank Pig had a cast of just two, David Gorry and Sean Rocks, the latter playing up to 14 different roles. Wonderful.
And there was the angry playwright. I interviewed him for the paper prior to a staging of his adaptation of well known play. We met on the opening night and he was very pleased with the by then published interview.
His adaptation was a bit of a shambles, not helped by a well-known singer who couldn’t act and a well known actor who couldn’t sing. I wrote accordingly in the review.
A few weeks later I saw him on a train and went up to say hello. Very, very foolish. He spat: “. . . that was a shit review”, got up out of his seat and changed carriages at the next station.
He didn’t speak to me for a long time afterwards.
Review from the Latin re- + videre, to see again
inaword@irishtimes.com
