‘Well, Theatre Is Subjective Anyway’

By Dan Sinclair

Can theatre criticism, theatre reviews ever be objective, objectively correct? Subjective. It’s the one word that has haunted theatre critics since the dawn of time. No matter how many paragraphs you type out in the wee hours, it can, and frequently is, countered simply with the phrase:

Well, theatre is subjective anyway.

But is it?

Let’s take the term subjective to mean an opinion solely based on personal opinion, on taste and feelings. On the flip side, we have objective, an opinion based on proven facts. Pierce Brosnan, in the 2008 hit film Mamma Mia, is, by all the metrics of vocal training and music theory, objectively bad. Yet I still love him? Theatre journalism is a broad church. I have frequently, and very recently (but no shade shall be thrown here), seen a production which opened to rave reviews, yet when I saw it, I despised it. Not only did I dislike the messaging, but the production as a piece of theatre - In my subjective opinion, of course. From the broadsheets to the online press, I seem to be in the minority. Yet, from discussions with friends, I have realised that I am not alone. Isn’t that strange?

Mamma Mia! Released 2008, written by Catherine Johnson and directed by Phyllida Lloyd

But with the aforementioned and anonymous show, I reckon I could give a go at digging through some textbooks and theatre academia to prove that, in fact (as I push my glasses further up my nose and smirk), I have a case to make. But I’m no longer giving an opinion, I’ve drifted into the realm of essay, and that is simply not the purpose of a review. If, when reading a theatre review, we are demanding an un-academic, subjective opinion, then why is there still a barrier to entry to whose opinion makes it to print?

Theatre reviews and audiences are subjective, everyone will take something different from it. That’s a fact that I would never attempt to deny, mainly as it would make me sound like the most pretentious theatre critic to walk the Earth. But theatre is made with objectivity. An actor hopes to give a performance that is objectively good. A writer tries to craft a script that is objectively good.

Yet when this is not the case (as it is impossible), the word subjective appears. 

Photo source: Caitlin Watkins. The Stanislavsky Method, Backstage Magazine.

If an opinion or a review is subjective, then it can easily be dismissed as just that, an opinion. The idea of an objective fact in theatre is a terrifying thought, because it means that someone can be factually wrong. And if a theatre critic is wrong, then what worth do they have? If a scientist concludes that the Earth is made of jelly, we can use science to shame their stupidity and prove them to be objectively wrong. If a theatre critic says a script is objectively good, but a scientist can prove them objectively wrong, then they are bad at their job. They are a bad scientist.

But Theatre is not science. Objective facts do not exist in theatre, and they never should. But that does not mean that many (men) have not tried to make it so. For centuries, Aristotle, his text Poetics and his theories on how to write tragedies, comedies and epics have been taught and respected as fact. And most plays written between then and the turn of the 19th century agreed that his approach was objectively correct, leading to the vague term in theatre of a ‘well-written play’. But he’s not objectively right, as thousands of pieces of theatre have since proved. 

Source: Charles Kunken's Aristotle's Poetics In Stick Figure

We can look inwards and see the dangers of deciding that one reviewer's opinion is an objective fact or, worse still, worth more than others. Between the late 1950’s and 1970’s, the Oxford-educated and vaguely insufferable Kenneth Tynan was respected for his divisive theatre opinions in The Observer, and retrospectively he is considered to have had the objectively correct opinion at the time regarding his championing of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Osborne’s Look Back In Anger. But after seeing its recent revival at the Almeida, I think it did an excellent job of questioning whether Tynan was correct in his praise at the time. 

More recently, The Guardian’s Michael Billington was respected as an authoritative voice on the question of good theatre. Is it his fault, or is it the natural inclination we have to trust a well-educated white man writing for a broadsheet newspaper? I cannot help but feel that current broadsheet theatre critics would not be so easily dismissed, in many theatre circles regularly referred to as being objectively wrong, had they fitted into our theatre critic-shaped box, complete with trench coat, glass of red wine, typewriter and a degree from Cambridge. But perhaps we are to blame, a deep-rooted prejudice where, when we glide past a poster on the tube and see five stars from [insert broadsheet newspaper here], we assume objective goodness.

If theatre criticism can be objectively correct, then someone can be the arbiter of right and wrong.

Photo credit: Terry Rand. Pictured (left) Marlon Brando right (Kenneth Tynan).

So in come the underdogs, the online theatre press, perhaps the broadest church of all. And I don’t mean your TimeOuts, What’s On Stage’s or The Stage’s, I mean the grassroots theatre criticism. Just from the top of my head: All That Dazzles, Broadway World, Theatre and Tonic, Youngish Perspective, Everything Theatre, London Pub Theatre, Reviews Hub, The Wee Review, Theatre Weekly, People of Theatre, it goes on and on and on. The validity and worth of these online publications has been a topic of debate before, with their inclusion on official marketing deemed as a "cacophony of noise", making it “impossible for people to earn a living doing it now.”. Another loss then for the Oxbridge-educated theatre critic community. Shame.

It all leads me to my slightly sticky endpoint. In the free ticket and drinks token-soaked world of theatre reviews, there is no such thing as an objectively correct opinion. But unless something changes, some opinions are still more equal than others.