Bad behavior all around as Dramatists Guild clashes with critic

From The Chicago Sun-Times, etc: No one is ending up covered in glory in the matter of Hedy Weiss versus the Dramatists Guild of America. Weiss, already notorious for suggesting Tony Kushner is a "self-loathing Jew" in her Sun-Times review of Caroline, Or Change, more recently panned workshop performances of eight new musicals at Chicago's Stages 2006 festival, concluding that none was "ready for prime time."

Well, duh. By definition, a workshop production isn't ready for prime time: that's what makes it a workshop production. Worse, Weiss confessed that she hadn't actually sat through any of the shows in their entirety. DGA President John Weidman fired off an indignant letter, inveighing that "Ms. Weiss's decision to review these eight shows at this early stage in their development, in violation of the express wishes of the theatre, was a shocking and irresponsible betrayal . . . ."

But wait. It turns out that the producer, Theatre Building Chicago, didn't actually ask Hedy Weiss not to review the workshop productions (as they certainly should have done); in fact, she's reviewed them for the previous two years (2004, 2005) without a peep from anybody -- she just happened to review them more positively in those years. As Weiss pointed out in her reply to anyone who'd listen.

But that doesn't excuse Weiss from being so dense as to review workshop productions in the first place. Or so sleazy as to do so without even watching them all the way through. Moral of the story: in the dog days of summer, everyone's an idiot.