The title of this thread is misleading. It makes it sound like Matthew was fired, when in reality he resigned due to personal circumstances.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
I for one, am not unhappy to see him go. I think that his reviews are often pseudo-intellectual, and instead of a good writer's understanding that "less is more" he often seems to write with an understanding that "more is better." He delights, it seems, from being considered erudite when in truth many of his reviews were often unreadable. There's an amateur reviewer on the site who reviews every show under the moniker Jesse21 who I believe is both a better critic and a better writer than Murray.
Aside from that, I think that Murray enjoys being a contrarian. Though I, like most here, agree with a particular critic's reviews some of the time and disagree some of the time, it seemed to me that I disagreed with Murray more frequently than I did with any other critic.
CZJ at opening night party for A Little Night Music, Dec 13, 2009.
I honestly just stopped reading his reviews. I read his bio somewhere and it shed,for me anyway, a bit of a light on his negativity. I welcome the new person.
Ragged Tear said: "RaisedOnMusicals said: "Thanks, Elphie. Fixed it to say what I meant."
Actually, it now says "unappy." Which is off enough to be confusing. You should edit it again."
I read it after the initial edit and understood that it was a basic typo. It wasn't confusing at all.
Also, I've never cared for his reviews, so I'm dreadfully curious about this career he's pursuing outside of New York. What local pennysaver is going to reap the benefit of his years of experience?
Yes, someone who reviewed more than 2,000 shows for free while holding down a separate full-time job clearly hates theater.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
My hometown had a severe critic who was ground down by years of weekly amateur theater. Eventually the only thing he still liked were broad comedies. They seemed to wake him up.
Show Score has tallied Murray's reviews. I'm not seeing a different pattern. This year he enjoyed the plays: A Dolls House Part 2, The Antipodes, Indecent, The Emperor Jones, Significant Other,Sweat and The Liar. The only musicals he cared for were Hello Dolly and Sunset Boulevard.
Are his standards higher for musicals or is he simply tired of them? Does it take a female star to get his attention?
I don't read reviews all the time and knowing his reputation for negativity, I avoided his in general. But for some of the smaller shows where I was curious enough to read his reviews, I thought the bad reviews were spot on. He was critical in smart, relevant ways (not like some people going off on tangents).