Critics Confounded

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

What a pity it seems that thrasonical New York and CRIMSON critics who deserve to know better, should temper their reviews with ill-considered jobbery and snobbery which words add up not to the expression of a theatrical verite but an unsubstantiated vagueness of feeling as "good" and "bad" about a show which normative without elaboration do nothing to educate audiences theatre wise and leave playwright, actor and producer to work out his own salvation and wonder why one play succeeds so admirably while another falls so completely with the result that the stature of critic has reached a new low; indeed a contemporary belief remains that there exists nothing creative about good criticism and that the foundation of success on the printing press depends on whether you serve Mr. Atkinson, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Gibbs with Haig and Haig or indifferent Walker Red Label in generous doses before curtain time.

The truth of the matter is not that our critics have sensitive palates or have been brought up in an environment that recognizes the importance of the beverage connoisseur, the heavy drinker or the excellent use to which alcohol may be put as an antiseptic; but that they write "reviews" and not theatrical "criticism." This situation is easily evidenced if an enterprising person should find the concern to read Bernard Shaw, Archer or Walkeley and compare them to their modern counterparts. The poverty of mind, soul and spirit that gaps the present generation of commentators from their predecessors should lead to despair if that plight did not require a quantity absent from his present day critical scene--hope. Rather than pray and hope for a critical renaissance, the theatre world chooses to redefine the position of the critic in their midst remembering, I fear, that old truism, "to have never hoped is to never have despaired." This indifference to emotion and life expressed in a defensive, fatalistic attitude is to be much lamented as Dr. Faustus laments the sale and riddance of his soul for likewise by debunking the critic, theatre has lost the means of viewing herself to her mind's eye and must henceforth don the powder and greasepaint, the eyebrow and wig less the aid of the mirror and the important light that reflects therein. And so in the darkness of ignorance under the illusion of being in the light, without a critical past, without a discriminating present, without the dynamic of channeled volition working from someplace to somewhere. American theatre stumbles along the graveled road of prejudice and opinion, the victim of chance and circumstance. New play forms are introduced but remain unrecognized; new values are believed and expressed but rest ignored for their intrinsic worth sometimes buried by the censure of the blind, sometimes buried by the applause, the accolades, the paeans and comity of those supposed to know.

Must your newspaper's critics relentlessly follow their hapless brethren down the road of diluted rot where there is no integrity, no craftsmanship, no clear and vivid expression and where measurements and analyses serve alone to convey the vanity of that elegant man of letters who with perfect taste in every line prides himself in being above his work? Or can the CRIMSON recognize an artistic aim and rise to the occasion of true criticism by doing justice to actor, playwright and their readers who willingly subscribe five cents daily for enlightenment and ask so little in compensation. David B. Aldrich '52   Vice Chairman, Pudding Theatricals

We do our best.-Ed.