Isherwood makes me miss Brantley

[holdyourbatboy]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 10:18am

Isherwood's reviews have been insane this season and borderline damages the integrity of the NYTimes.  I long for the days of Brantley reviewing major musicals.  At least his point of view is intelligent and thoughtfully crafted, whether I disagree with his opinion or not.  

Isherwood is an embarrassment. 

[WayTooBroadway]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 10:33am

I wholeheartedly agree.  It's easy to hate Brantley, but his opinions (they are critics after all) are well-supported and smart.

[JBroadway]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 10:44am

Totally 100% agree. I feel like most of the time when I click on a NYT review nowadays it's always Isherwood. I know Brantley is still reviewing, but the shows he covers are rarely the reviews I looking forward to reading. 

As both of you said, I don't always agree with Brantley, but he has interesting things to say, and his writing is engaging and entertaining to read. 

Updated On: 4/28/16 at 10:44 AM

[HogansHero]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 1:18pm

Ben is focusing more on the best of New York theatre rather than the most expensive. To me that is a very good thing. No matter what you might think of Isherwood's reviews, the measure of the Times' integrity is that its chief critic is writing about what our culture should be paying attention to rather than what the marketing people spend the most money promoting. 

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 1:20pm

Isherwood truly is a joke. Don't ask him to consider anything that challenges him. Just send him to anything with songs he grew up with or anything with a leaden camp wink and he'll be in bliss. 

[devonian.t]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 2:06pm

Brantley makes me miss Rich.

[broadwaysfguy]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 6:19pm

the NY Times has been walking dead for 15 years it just doesn't know it yet....

[TotallyEffed]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 6:26pm

Isherwood's predictions for the Tonys are always a laugh riot. The only thing funnier are his picks for who "should" win.

[Randomlink1]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 7:01pm

Isherwood just doesn't interest me. With Brantley his reviews are much more passionate, and he usually has more interesting things to say.

[HogansHero]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 10:00pm

broadwaysfguy said: "the NY Times has been walking dead for 15 years it just doesn't know it yet...."

If you mean for the same reason as every other newspaper in the world, sure, but they have known it for most of that period. If you mean something else, I can't imagine what it might be.

[yankeefan7]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 9:04am

Brantley did "Shuffle Along" (very positive) and "American Psycho" so it appears he is sharing with Isherwood who wrote the reviews for "Waitress" and "Tusk Everlasting".

[After Eight]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 9:06am

Isherwood and Brantley make me miss Walter Kerr.

[HogansHero]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 10:02am

After Eight said: "Isherwood and Brantley make me miss Walter Kerr."

What's to miss? Let's remember what we are "missing."

Re Follies " 'Follies' is intermissionless and exhausting, an extravaganza that becomes tedious for two simple reasons: Its extravagances have nothing to do with its pebble of a plot; and the plot, which could be wrapped up in approximately two songs, dawdles through 22 before it declares itself done... Mr. Sondheim may be too much a man of the seventies, too present-tense sophisticated... The effort to bind it up inhibits the crackling, open-ended, restlessly varied surges of sound he devised with such distinction for Company." 

Re West Side Story "the most savage, restless, electrifying dance patterns we've been exposed to in a dozen seasons... The dancing is it. Don't look for laughter or—for that matter—tears." 

Re Waiting For Godot "The play, asking for a thousand readings, has none of its own to give. It is a veil rather than a revelation. It wears a mask rather than a face."

And of course I Am a Camera "Me no Leica" 

At least it cannot be said of the current two that they resist experimentation in the theatre and it is worth noting that such resistance is antithetical to the theatre, the sort of notion propagated by those who want an art form to die with them. 

[Kad]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 10:13am

HogansHero said:  "At least it cannot be said of the current two that they resist experimentation in the theatre and it is worth noting that such resistance is antithetical to the theatre, the sort of notion propagated by those who want an art form to die with them. "

Well, you've just described After Eight perfectly.

[HogansHero]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 11:19am

I know. I don't begrudge anyone their personal tastes but I'll go to the mat over notions that are deleterious to the art form. 

Posted: 4/29/16 at 11:37am

Isherwood is definitely not doing the New York Theater any favors with his puzzling, amateurish, reviews. That being said, the only people that really care about reviews anymore are those that work in show business and the fans who eat, sleep, and breathe it.

Brantley's reviews are Pulitzer worthy compared to Isherwood, but he too is part of the modern newspaper era where arts sections have already been cut from the budget.  What do you expect when the entire field is treated as an afterthought.

Rich was the last of the great theater reviewers, but that's partly because of the "TIMES" in which he lived in.  Newspapers actually put great, respected, writers in those positions then.

Also regarding Walter Kerr....you can't judge history. Just because he disliked a show from the 50's/60's that we hold as a classic example of the cannon now doesn't mean he didn't know what he was talking about.  Shows like West Side Story and Follies were changing the musical theater form....nobody had seen shows like them before up until that moment.  Of course classicists like Kerr were going to dislike a form revolutionary like Sondheim. The form has been broken and reinvented so many times by now that we more easily accept breaking the rules. Back then it was considered a bit blasphemous.

Updated On: 4/29/16 at 11:37 AM

[HogansHero]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 12:21pm

@standingovation79.I haven't read so much nonsense in one post since... yesterday. You are of course free to like and dislike what you will but:

"arts sections have already been cut from the budget.  What do you expect when the entire field is treated as an afterthought."

The Times has a seven figure theatre budget and and eight figure arts (culture) budget. It is beyond ridiculous to make the statement you do. 

"Rich was the last of the great theater reviewers, but that's partly because of the "TIMES" in which he lived in.  Newspapers actually put great, respected, writers in those positions then."

Rich was widely reviled in his "TIMES." That doesn't mean you can't think he was great but you can't rewrite history about the butcher of Broadway.

And finally re Kerr: Kerr had a bad reputation of building a fortress around the past. Others were able to see in Sondheim and Bernstein and Robbins and Beckett et al what they were to become; Kerr was famous for not getting it until it had been gotten. That is not a characteristic that one should "miss." I would think that most intelligent people would look to the staff at the major newspaper on this continent to identify and convey "news"  whether it is some as-yet obscure politician or playwright. As I mentioned in another post, I think Brantley in particular deserves praise for not wallowing in the comfort of Broadway but instead seeking out and reporting on the obscuritanalia that communicates the evolution of our culture.

 

[JM226]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 12:30pm

^^^^ enough. begone. 

Posted: 4/29/16 at 12:48pm

The New York Times has made HUGE cuts to its arts section in the last decade. At one time they absolutely had the greatest arts coverage in the country...that is not true now.

You should get a copy of Frank Rich's book of reviews...the man loved the theater and it was evident in the passion in which he wrote about it. I've never read a review of his in which i doubted it.  Brantley writes about it like he's above the art form, like he is being forced to cover it, like he's looking for a cynical punchline to lure in readers.  It's also a cultural rite of passage for those who love the theater to complain about the major critics. We do it with Brantley and Isherwood now...that's what this feed is about, lol.

Like I said, you can't judge history...Kerr didn't get it, but he came from a very classicist theater background and taste level.

[After Eight]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 12:58pm

"Kerr didn't get it."

 

He got it all right. Far more than those whom we call "critics" today.

 

It's like comparing a sequoia to tree stumps.

Posted: 4/29/16 at 12:59pm

after eight, i'm replying to an earlier post defending Kerr as a critic =))

[HogansHero]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 1:59pm

@standingovation79 "they absolutely had the greatest arts coverage in the country...that is not true now." who are you suggesting has supplanted them? And by the way,the budget is actually considerably larger now than it was in the days of Kerr. 

I own every book Rich has ever written. I like Rich, but that does not alter what I said which is that he was castigated far more than anyone is today. I don't get the "being forced to cover" meme and in particular I'd especially refer you again tohis championing of theatre. Maybe what you are confusing the theatre with Broadway. 

We agree about the cultural rite of passage which I thought was MY point lol

@After Eight please just amuse yourself defending your version of the past while the adults have an intelligent discussion. 

@JM226 let me offer to you the like reaction of Mr. Albee to Little Johnny Simon on the occasion of his dismissal from New York Magazine: "Mr. Simon's disapproval of my plays has been a source of comfort to me over the years and his dislike of A Delicate Balance gives me courage to go on, as they say."

[JM226]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 3:07pm

^^^ stop.

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 3:10pm

Great posts, HogansHero

[mamaleh]

Posted: 4/29/16 at 3:21pm

Well, he gets the prize for the only use of "obscuritanalia" I've ever seen on this board.