Theater Critics Gossip

Theater Critics: What's their damage?

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• Ben Brantley has long outstayed his welcome - if there was ever a "welcome" at all. His reviews aren't very enlightening, especially his dreaded "love letter" reviews.

• I can't believe MIchael Reidel is straight

• A lack of writing talent and a jealousy of people who are so gifted.

• Is John Simon still alive? He did a lot of damage in his day.

  Sylvia

• He's not, R2.

  Susan%20Haskins

• Reidel is straight. I pulled up next to his urinal one time and pulled my 11 inches and wacked it around the urinal. He didn't even look over at it. When he left, he turned AWAY from me and left the urinal.

• As William Goldman once famously said, looking for the world's greatest theatre critic is as futile as looking for the world's greatest ditchdigger. He doesn't exist because the job doesn't call forth the man. The job is SHIT. Which is why theatre critics suck, always have, and always will. Read THE SEASON. Nothing's changed.

• Riedel and his bf have the seats in front of me at Encores, every Friday night. They sit there and hold hands while the ballads play, and whisper like little girls. The bf often kisses Riedel's ear. No straight man does that.

• R8, where is Encores and what is it?

• Charles Isherwood has VICIOUS halitosis.

• A friend who sublet Riedel's Village apartment got kicked out ten years later when the landlord found out.

• R9 = too dumb to live

• Unlike plays and people, Ben Brantley has never come across a buffet he didn't like. That boy is a P.I.G., pig.

• I'll never forget watching Stephen Holden picking his nose during a Karen Akers cabaret act at the Oak Room of the Algonquin. His index finger was all the way up his nose probably massaging his brain for le mot juste. He was there then with a boyfriend; I also saw him at the Oak Room another time reviewing some other cabaret performer and he was with a dame who was all over him.

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• Ben Brantley looks dirty in person, like he doesn't wash his clothes often enough.

• Critics may be marginal people, but even by that low standard I'm still surprised Riedel's name is brought up in this thread. What's most amazing is that, judging from his appearance in the docu "Show Business", Riedel himself has no idea what a complete bottom-feeder he is.

• Riedel may be a self-important bitch, R16, and he's basically a gossip columnist. But EVERYONE in NYC with any connection (or interest in) theatre reads his column. Cause it's fun. And that's just not true of his classier "legit critic" colleagues. People will glance at the Times to see if it's thumbs up or thumbs down, but no one pores over the reviews. Frank RIch was, in the 80s, one of the most loathed people in NY theatre, but everyone read his reviews. Every word.

• Even though I had very little respect for Rich's opinions -- he was the quintessence of middlebrow -- I never doubted the seriousness of his intent or his ability to see a larger artistic purpose. (That sounds way more high falutin' than I mean.) But Riedel's like a hairdresser who, because he services the wife of a publisher of a local newspaper, gets the job reviewing community theater ... and terrorizes the few people who give a shit. In a way, Riedel is the perfect "critic" for the industry that Broadway has become. And, btw, if Riedel is straight then I will personally eat out Marian Seldes vagina.

• Riedel IS straight. Didn't you hear him say so when they interviewed him?

• You realize of course that most of these posts are by the same embittered person? So tiresome. Go home dear. Please.

• Don't drag me into this.

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• OH dear, R20 is tired and calls strangers Dear. Must be an elder, living alone in the nursing home.

• This thread pretty clearly is basically a conversation between two, possibly three, extremely elderly assholes.

• It is odd how everyone hated Frank Rich when he was a critic BUT loved him when he became a op-ed writer.

• The critics didn't help me, the bitches.

  Kathie Lee Gifford's 'Scandalous'

• I thought people feared Frank Rich because he was so influential. And he campaigned for shows, in his perspectives column. I didn't know he was hated. I think he was too good of a writer to be hated.

• I think he was hated by his foes. I bought his collected reviews at a used bookstore recently. He added some present day comments after the reviews. Trevor Nunn and David Hare and a lot of the British mega-musical people really hated him. He feels his opinions have been validated with time.

• There is no way that Riedel would have looked at r6's dick, even if he wanted to - because he knows it would make its way into the gossip circuit if he did. His whole column depends on the kindness of strange r6s, who feed him quick tips about celeb naughtiness. So, he's very, very careful - particularly since he was shamed by his own drunken antics a few years back.

• The Village Voice's Michael Feingold is worried about being fired. For my money, which ain't much, he's he smartest critic in NYC.