Seven on the Aisle

Along Broadway last week, first-nighters twice crowded in excitedly for the openings of new plays: Jean Giraudoux's Ondine and Elmer Rice's The Winner (see THEATER). Among the celebrity-packed audience at each opening were seven men whose arrivals in the theater were meticulously noted by people on both sides of the curtain. The seven: New York's big daily newspaper critics, who wield a power in their field that few newsmen can match. As soon as the final cur tain touched the stage, four of them hurried for the exits and made for their offices, where within one hour they had written their reviews and sent them to the composing rooms of the morning papers. Their verdict: Ondine, mixed praise; The Winner, mixed disappointment.

For their efforts (as many as 80 reviews a season), the critics often get more criticism than they dish out. They have been denounced by producers, directors, playwrights and actors as "despots," the "Jukes family of journalism," and "spiteful" men who are "not qualified to do their jobs either by taste or training." With every opening, the controversy flares up anew: How powerful are the newspaper critics? What is the critics' job? How well do they do it? What effect do they really have on the theater?

The Big Three. Manhattan producers and theatergoers rate the newspaper critics as strictly as they rate theatrical performances. The top three: the Times's Brooks Atkinson, 59, dean of U.S. daily drama critics; the Daily News's John Chapman, 53, successor to the late Burns Mantle, who writes for the biggest newspaper circulation in the U.S. (2,109,601 ); the Herald Tribune's Walter Kerr, 40. who directs and writes plays himself. The Times's review, says Producer (A Streetcar Named Desire) Irene Selznick, is the "most important because the Times isn't trying to reach any audience. The Times doesn't give a damn. It's just there."

But all seven critics' reviews are read with scriptural attention on Broadway, even though the majority feel "our responsibility is not to the theater but to the public." Says Chapman: "I write for an audience of one--a tough one: me." Atkinson, Kerr and the Post's Richard Watts have a similar "personal" yardstick. The Mirror's Robert Coleman ("My readers consider me a ... shopper for them"), the Journal-American's John McClain ("My duty is to tell my readers whether or not a show is worth the price of a ticket") and the World-Telegram and Sun's William Hawkins ("My role is informative ... as is any good shopping service") all take a somewhat less individualistic view of their roles.

Whatever their standards, there is no doubt that critics count at the box office.

Productions have been known to survive lukewarm reviews (e.g., Wish You Were Here, Kind Sir, Kismet) and fail despite good reviews (Billy Budd, Take a Giant Step), but they are the exception rather than the rule. Some plays, which cost as much as $150,000 to bring to Broadway, have closed within a week because of bad reviews. When reviews are mixed, the play is on its own, but sometimes word-of-mouth and "names" can turn it into a hit such as Cole Porter's Can-Can.

Critic Kerr and others blame the audiences for the way that plays often stand or fall solely on the critics' word. "The audience," says Kerr, "has voluntarily surrendered its privilege of judgment." In general, seven favorable reviews will assure a play a run; a general panning will kill it. Actually the critics, who really want people to go to the theater, are often kinder than the public, are frequently berated in letters from disappointed theatergoers. Commented Critic Chapman: "Ticket prices are such that today's theatergoer, demanding a guarantee of his money's worth, wants only the hits . . . This results in the almost disastrous 'hit or-flop' state of the theater."

This attitude affects newspaper criticism as well as audience opinion. The newspaper critic, says Kerr, "finds that if he's seen a 'soso' play or a 'nice little show,' he can't say it that way in print. He has to come from the opening and say it's brilliant, it's wonderful." As a result, many a producer and director charges the critics with too often being "shallow" or "dull." "When a critic praises a play," says the Mirror's Coleman, "he is a wonderful critic . . . When he pans one, he is destructive, monstrous, unintelligent." Director Margaret Webster sums it up simply: "Bad notices will cook you. It's impossible to grin and bear it."

The Verdict. Has the critics' verdict over the years been right? Most theater people (when their own flops are not in question) grudgingly agree that there have been very few miscarriages of critical justice. "I try to keep in mind, even when viewing the dreariest efforts," says the Journal-American's McClain, "that the people involved are not criminals." There are times when the critics have been dead wrong, he adds, "but even an I.B.M. machine blows a gasket now and then."

Theater people have tried every trick to counteract bad reviews. Some have taken big ads calling the critics names, made curtain speeches asking the audience to "tell your friends how much you enjoyed the play." (Recently Billy Rose, fearing a panning, persuaded the critics to stay away from The Immoralist while he held a week of "paid previews" in Manhattan to get the play in shape.) But in the end. most producers have learned to their sorrow that bucking bad reviews is expensive and fruitless.

Some of them unjustly blame the newspaper critics for that state of affairs, though, as Atkinson points out: "The only power in the theater is on the stage; it is put there by authors, actors and directors. The critic can only transmit that power to the public." In any case, the critics themselves are as uneasy about their influence at the box office as theater people are. For this influence. Producer (The Remarkable Mr. Penny packer) Robert Whitehead thinks the theater it self is often to blame. Said he: "We blow up the critics. We make them important. Two days after an opening, we quote them, put ads in the papers with the best lines from their notices. Those of us who are doing all the screaming are responsible for creating the problem in the first place."

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