Arts & Minds: The review vs 'media performance'

By GILBERT WONG arts editor

As my counterpart Denis Welch has reported in the Listener, a policy instituted by the Auckland Theatre Company has raised strong opposition from the National Business Review, the Sunday Star-Times, the Listener and the New Zealand Herald.

That policy was to hold a Wednesday night "media performance", where the latest play from the company could be reviewed. This would have meant readers would have had to wait for up to a week after opening night before having the chance to read a review. Arts on Monday boycotted the "media performance" and published a review of the ATC production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as usual in Monday's paper.

I am glad to report that company director Simon Prast has recognised the need to publish prompt reviews and abandoned the previous policy. In a letter, he says, "We believe that public judgment of other people's livelihoods is a serious, sobering responsibility and should at all times be discharged with great professional care, skill, respect and accountability. We enter the fray as professionals and in good faith and ask only that the same courtesy be afforded in return.

"We absolutely recognise the reviewer's right to critique our work in accordance with these principles. To this extent, we respectfully submit that in addition to promptness, your readers also rightly expect context, coherence, consistency and a fair representation of the review's subject."

Agreed. Reviewers seek to do no less than that. And reviews are no more nor no less than an informed opinion from a critic on how he or she saw it that night. Their sole function is to furnish a viewpoint and let readers know what they might expect.

At a broader cultural level, reviews are one public measure of whether a performance has met artistic goals. While audience enjoyment is an important factor of a good night out, art isn't a popularity contest. If it was, then it has already lost to film and television. The fact that Big Brother or Temptation Island scores highly in viewer ratings has no bearing on a critical judgment of artistic worth.

While a review, as Prast maintains, might have an impact on ticket sales, that impact goes both ways and is not the reason the paper publishes them. We publish reviews because people like to read them, but everyone makes up their own minds and nobody would want it otherwise.