Playwrights who hate the Times' critics, please line up to the left

From The Huffington Post: We're all for playwrights hauling off and trash-talking critics, but Jon Robin Baitz's now notorious blog post attacking The New York Times' Christopher Isherwood gives us an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Isherwood had, pretty benignly, suggested that writers who'd given up on theatre in favor of writing for television use the "opportunity" of the WGA strike to return to their first love. Baitz, as if some hot button in him had been pushed, went off like a rocket.

Great. We'd like to see more playwrights functioning also as journalists. But Baitz's dissing of Isherwood (as well as, more patronizingly, Times critic Ben Brantley), has a certain, almost comical inevitability about it. Those of a certain age will remember when Clive Barnes, as the Grey Lady's first-string critic, was roundly reviled in the New York theatre community, and the sighs of relief and hail-fellow-well-mets that greeted Frank Rich when he moved into the spot. (Were there any in between the two? I don't recall, but that probably means I don't need to.) Rich, it was at first agreed, was much better -- smarter, more sincerely interested in theatre, etc., etc. But, of course, eventually he had panned or ignored enough people that he, too, became the bête noir of theatre people: "The Butcher of Broadway," malicious, too intellectual, whatever.

So it is with a certain wry amusement that one notes Baitz citing Rich favourably by way of comparison with Isherwood -- who now, like his predecessors, moves onto the lepers' island reserved for long-running Times critics. 'Twas ever thus. But wait until the next guy (or, perhaps better, gal) gets the gig. He/she will be much better.

Labels: Ben Brantley, Christopher Isherwood, Frank Rich, Jon Robin Baitz, New York Times, playwrights, playwriting