Friday 12 April 2013

Musings (Feel Free to Ignore)

I am always wondering about the purpose of criticism. Frankly, that's just an application of my general feeling of existential dread to the task in hand. I wonder about the point of life most of the time - sometimes in the positive, student manner, when it becomes a matter of joy and experiment. Other days, I look back at my reviews - especially my early ones - and wonder what the hell I was thinking, and how I could be so unpleasant about the striving of my fellow humans.

Traditionally, the critic has been all about the review: here's a few words explaining what happened in the theatre, and here's my aesthetic opinion. Now and again, there's a more political edge to the review - certain magazines might be fairly predictable in their allegiances and bias. But the review stands to give potential punters a quick overview of whether they ought to invest time and money in the action.

By the time I got around to seeing Gary McNair's latest, the punters had already decided: it was sold out. I was glad about that: Donald Robertson really impressed me, and set a very high standard for the rest of the NTS' Auteurs programme. Having seen McNair's early work, Donald Robertson felt like the culmination of McNair's explorations of the monologue. His persona was tighter, even when he consciously undermined himself and his ideas about the power of comedy were clear and brutal. 

Looking at McNair's previous pieces, like Crunch or Count Me In, it is surprising that he hasn't joined in with another more obviously political piece (he even turned up in Lyn Gardner's round-up of political theatre a few months back). Surprising and admirable - to be honest, I didn't want to hear a monologue about independence - but the shift towards social rather than political drama paid dividends. However charming McNair can be on stage (he can charm old ladies into ripping up hard cash), political monologues can be alienating. There are a few artists knocking about around Scotland at the moment, whom I adore and respect, but I fear that they might start talking about independence at any moment.

Getting back on task - my review of McNair won't be persuading anyone to go and see it - too late - unless the NTS and The Arches decide he is worth a second production (and it totally is). But I am interested in reviewing work like this from another perspective: what is its context, and how does it relate to that context. I think I want to be a post-structuralist: looking at how the environment shapes  something's creation, then how it shapes the environment back. Or, to put it another way (before I look up post-structuralism on wikipedia and find out that isn't what it means): the critical discourse manifested within the popular review embodies a dialectic between the created art work and the precreated context within which it is contained. 

Using clear, coherent language, eh? 

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