HOW TO WRITE A THEATER REVIEW
A good review strikes a balance between providing an overview of the production (giving context, the “big picture” and a broad assessment of what happens on stage) AND zooming in on some particularly interesting concerns or themes (your focus; something that gives the piece an angle).
Here are my suggestions for preparing to do this.
1. Look at models. We will do this in class today with Ben Brantley’s New York Times review of Romeo and Juliet from September 2013 and Hilton Als’ New Yorker review of the same production. Feel free to study more models from leading newspapers and publications.
2. Prepare to watch the play in an active and critically engaged fashion. Do some online research beforehand to learn about the director and actors and context of the production.
3. Go to the play with a particular question or theme in mind. This should be a theme or question you’ve come up with based on your reading of the play and our critical readings about tragedy throughout the semester. This will be the thing you are looking for specifically in the production. Plan to notice the details that relate to it and take notes about it during intermission and after the play. Here are some examples of things you might decide to look for:
How does the director handle the problem of introducing so many characters and explaining their relationship to each other?
How does this adaptation acknowledge the discovery of the skeleton of Richard III in Leicester earlier this year?
4. Let the production speak to you. Though you have your own questions and agenda for viewing the play, also be open to things you may never have noticed about the play before—things that pertain specifically to this production or the director’s vision. For instance, there may be an actor whose performance is so special that it steals the show and reveals something new about that character and her or his role in the play. There may be decisions of costuming, music, acting, or general interpretation that challenge or expand your previous understanding of the play. A scene that you might not have found interesting when you read it may turn to be one of the best in the play. Stay attuned to the things your reading did not prepare you for. Take notes on these things too, while they are fresh in your mind.
5. Remember that a professional theater review usually includes most of the following elements:
-Context on the play and its previous adaptations, perhaps including some mention of particularly important scenes or lines in the play
-Context on the director and her or his previous career
-Context on the stars and their previous work
-A description and analysis of the director’s “concept” or approach to the play
-Commentary on the set, costumes, and music
-Awareness of the way that the program notes, venue, announcements and other elements shape the theatrical experience and frame the play for the audience
-Assessment: should others go and see the play? This doesn’t have to be a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” or a star ranking. Your assessment can be more subtle. For instance, you might think about who this production might be best-suited for (ie. “This show is perfect for a date night but isn’t child-friendly” or “Students of history will find much to inspire them here…”). You don’t have to tear the play apart or praise it to the skies (though feel free to)—but usually a theater review inhabits a more moderate ground, showing what a production does well, and pointing out a few places that might have been improved.
Try to use the play as the occasion for an interesting reflection on the play itself, and an opportunity to think about what happens when a play leaves the page and comes to the stage.
A good review strikes a balance between providing an overview of the production (giving context, the “big picture” and a broad assessment of what happens on stage) AND zooming in on some particularly interesting concerns or themes (your focus; something that gives the piece an angle).
Here are my suggestions for preparing to do this.
1. Look at models. We will do this in class today with Ben Brantley’s New York Times review of Romeo and Juliet from September 2013 and Hilton Als’ New Yorker review of the same production. Feel free to study more models from leading newspapers and publications.
2. Prepare to watch the play in an active and critically engaged fashion. Do some online research beforehand to learn about the director and actors and context of the production.
3. Go to the play with a particular question or theme in mind. This should be a theme or question you’ve come up with based on your reading of the play and our critical readings about tragedy throughout the semester. This will be the thing you are looking for specifically in the production. Plan to notice the details that relate to it and take notes about it during intermission and after the play. Here are some examples of things you might decide to look for:
How does the director handle the problem of introducing so many characters and explaining their relationship to each other?
How does this adaptation acknowledge the discovery of the skeleton of Richard III in Leicester earlier this year?
4. Let the production speak to you. Though you have your own questions and agenda for viewing the play, also be open to things you may never have noticed about the play before—things that pertain specifically to this production or the director’s vision. For instance, there may be an actor whose performance is so special that it steals the show and reveals something new about that character and her or his role in the play. There may be decisions of costuming, music, acting, or general interpretation that challenge or expand your previous understanding of the play. A scene that you might not have found interesting when you read it may turn to be one of the best in the play. Stay attuned to the things your reading did not prepare you for. Take notes on these things too, while they are fresh in your mind.
5. Remember that a professional theater review usually includes most of the following elements:
-Context on the play and its previous adaptations, perhaps including some mention of particularly important scenes or lines in the play
-Context on the director and her or his previous career
-Context on the stars and their previous work
-A description and analysis of the director’s “concept” or approach to the play
-Commentary on the set, costumes, and music
-Awareness of the way that the program notes, venue, announcements and other elements shape the theatrical experience and frame the play for the audience
-Assessment: should others go and see the play? This doesn’t have to be a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” or a star ranking. Your assessment can be more subtle. For instance, you might think about who this production might be best-suited for (ie. “This show is perfect for a date night but isn’t child-friendly” or “Students of history will find much to inspire them here…”). You don’t have to tear the play apart or praise it to the skies (though feel free to)—but usually a theater review inhabits a more moderate ground, showing what a production does well, and pointing out a few places that might have been improved.
Try to use the play as the occasion for an interesting reflection on the play itself, and an opportunity to think about what happens when a play leaves the page and comes to the stage.
Here is the opening of Hilton Als' review of David Leveaux's production of Romeo and Juliet. This is an excellent example of how a critic can find a particular theme to focus on that sheds light both on the original play, previous adaptations, and the production currently under review. Als chooses the idea that Romeo and Juliet the play is already like a movie in certain ways, and that the recent performance history has emphasized this aspect at the expense of the literariness (ie. words) of the play.
Als, Hilton. “Heavy Date: David Leveaux Stages Romeo and Juliet.” The New Yorker. September 30, 2013.
What happens when you pimp out the pop in a pop masterpiece? Does it cheapen the original work by association? An unfortunate aspect of the thirty or so modern-day screen adaptations of “Romeo and Juliet” is that they minimize the attention it takes to listen to the play; filmmakers tend to amp up the characters’ knowing youthfulness, while jettisoning much of the script’s literariness. Those film adaptations have made the play difficult for many people to sit through—you can’t fast-forward it, or leave it on pause—but it may be partly the fault of how the play itself is read. Looked at a certain way, “Romeo and Juliet” is a movie, or structured like one: in a series of relatively swift and visually sensational sequences, two bodies are joined together and torn apart by the exciting forces of desire, animosity, and love. Mark Van Doren, in his exceptional book about Shakespeare, writes that the poet’s eighth play is “a tragedy which is crowded with life. . . . But it is crowded at the same time with clevernesses, it keeps the odor of ink.” That ink is what the Australian director Baz Luhrmann tried to wipe away in his interesting, 1996 modernization of the tale, which dressed up the familiarities of the plot with opera-buffa staging, Bollywood jump cuts, and nervous, lovesick closeups. In short, Luhrmann used Shakespeare to serve his own style, which is fundamentally unliterary, despite all the talk.
The attention-getting success of Luhrmann’s adaptation, down to its graffiti-like branding—he titled his movie “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet”—clearly had a significant effect on the director David Leveaux’s current revival (at the Richard Rodgers). Leveaux is a theatre artist of great style, too, but his is a vision that suffers when he doesn’t have everything—cast, lighting, and so on—perfectly in balance. While Leveaux has apparently worked hard to bring his Verona, with its warring Capulets and Montagues, to life, his team betrays the strain of his desperate-to-be-hip imagination. (The first sign of trouble is in Jesse Poleshuck’s hollow décor and Fabio Toblini’s lazily put-together costumes.) Indeed, the only fleet imagination and unfettered conviction you’ll find in this visually predictable and rhythmically strange production come from Condola Rashad, as Juliet. With her wide eyes, her fantastic sense of physical play, and her seemingly unbridled certainty that joy is waiting on the other side of this thrilling moment or the next, Rashad is the show’s de-facto auteur; we rely on her focus to distract us from the production’s sad air of real talent struggling against missed opportunity. . . .
Als, Hilton. “Heavy Date: David Leveaux Stages Romeo and Juliet.” The New Yorker. September 30, 2013.
What happens when you pimp out the pop in a pop masterpiece? Does it cheapen the original work by association? An unfortunate aspect of the thirty or so modern-day screen adaptations of “Romeo and Juliet” is that they minimize the attention it takes to listen to the play; filmmakers tend to amp up the characters’ knowing youthfulness, while jettisoning much of the script’s literariness. Those film adaptations have made the play difficult for many people to sit through—you can’t fast-forward it, or leave it on pause—but it may be partly the fault of how the play itself is read. Looked at a certain way, “Romeo and Juliet” is a movie, or structured like one: in a series of relatively swift and visually sensational sequences, two bodies are joined together and torn apart by the exciting forces of desire, animosity, and love. Mark Van Doren, in his exceptional book about Shakespeare, writes that the poet’s eighth play is “a tragedy which is crowded with life. . . . But it is crowded at the same time with clevernesses, it keeps the odor of ink.” That ink is what the Australian director Baz Luhrmann tried to wipe away in his interesting, 1996 modernization of the tale, which dressed up the familiarities of the plot with opera-buffa staging, Bollywood jump cuts, and nervous, lovesick closeups. In short, Luhrmann used Shakespeare to serve his own style, which is fundamentally unliterary, despite all the talk.
The attention-getting success of Luhrmann’s adaptation, down to its graffiti-like branding—he titled his movie “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet”—clearly had a significant effect on the director David Leveaux’s current revival (at the Richard Rodgers). Leveaux is a theatre artist of great style, too, but his is a vision that suffers when he doesn’t have everything—cast, lighting, and so on—perfectly in balance. While Leveaux has apparently worked hard to bring his Verona, with its warring Capulets and Montagues, to life, his team betrays the strain of his desperate-to-be-hip imagination. (The first sign of trouble is in Jesse Poleshuck’s hollow décor and Fabio Toblini’s lazily put-together costumes.) Indeed, the only fleet imagination and unfettered conviction you’ll find in this visually predictable and rhythmically strange production come from Condola Rashad, as Juliet. With her wide eyes, her fantastic sense of physical play, and her seemingly unbridled certainty that joy is waiting on the other side of this thrilling moment or the next, Rashad is the show’s de-facto auteur; we rely on her focus to distract us from the production’s sad air of real talent struggling against missed opportunity. . . .
