I don’t read theatre reviews often.  Sure, if it’s a play I wrote, I’ll read it - like all human beings, I’m a curious animal.  It’s always interesting to hear what people think of what you’ve done, and frankly, I want to see if the reviewer wrote something I can use to promote the play and pay my bills.  But generally speaking, when I’m not directly involved with a show, I go because the play sounds interesting, because someone whose opinion I value recommended it, or because someone I know, admire or want to work with (or all of the above) is involved - not because I read a review.  In the case of needtheatre’s production of Mercury Fur by Phillip Ridley, the premise sounded interesting, and Edward Tournier, the young actor who was so good in Secrets of the Trade at the Black Dahlia, was in it.  So on a Saturday in early June, after having seen two very different shows on the Thursday and Friday preceding, Spit Like a Big Girl at the Rubicon and Good Boys at La Jolla Playhouse, I stayed local and hit up Mercury Fur, running at the Imagined Life Theatre (fka 2100 Square Feet) - what a relief to go to something 10 minutes away for a change.  What I saw in two intermissionless hours was a searingly intense, thought-provoking play, and afterward, I was lucky enough to have a long conversation with Ian Forester, associate artistic director of needtheatre.  While apparently the LA Weekly had recommended it highly, Ian let drop - though he was very classy and reserved about it - that the LA Times review was, uh…more problematic.

So I went online that night and sought out the review in question.  Let me digress for a moment.  Some years back, the Dramatists Guild Quarterly (back when there was a Quarterly) published a roundtable among a number of acclaimed playwrights whose ranks included Lanford Wilson and Jeff Sweet (who trains critics as part of the National Critics Institute at the O’Neill), among other playwriting notables.  I forget who said it, but one of the panelists talked about reviews often not being so much about the play but rather a platform for the reviewer’s purported wit, or to discuss the play the reviewer wished he’d seen rather than the one he did see.

So this is where I’m going to say that the LA Times review of Mercury Fur, written by Kathleen Foley, committed those cardinal sins - right?  Well, not exactly.  But the sin it committed was just as bad, and in some ways, worse:  the critic was clearly so offended by the play that it rendered her incapable of reviewing it.  Now here’s where it gets interesting:  I tried on two different occasions to add an online comment, as several others had done, in which I rebutted a number of elements of the review, but such comments require approval from the Times, and since neither comment has been posted yet and it’s been weeks, it seems mine have met with their disapproval.  Evidently you’re not allowed to inquire about the credentials of the critic, as I did in my first comment, or maybe you’re not allowed to call a comment in a review unprofessional, as I did in both.

Before I go into what was so wrong about the Mercury Fur review, it does beg the question, what qualifies someone as a critic?  In these days where any passionate or persistent blogger can label him or herself a critic regardless of training or experience, I’d still hope that the LA Times and other traditional media would hold themselves to a higher standard.  Often, that’s not the case.  The critic may be someone who fell into the job when someone else retired, or perhaps it’s someone who likes plays and saw an opportunity to get a bunch of free theatre tickets.  Maybe their training is in dance or film, and the paper needed somebody to pick up a few plays, so why not?  I don’t know Kathleen Foley, and I don’t know her credentials, though a Google search seemed to show that she’s been a critic for a while, and before that, she was an actor/comedienne and worked for Breakdown Services.  But evidently, the LA Times doesn’t think that’s a question I should be asking.  Perhaps their answer is the tautology, “Our critics are qualified to review theatre because they’re our critics.”

Enough prelude.  Let’s talk about Mercury Fur and why the review doesn’t work.  In my opinion - and that of many who have seen it - it’s a very, very good production.  This is not to say that everyone is required to agree with me.  If the review had said, “Well, the actors seemed to be caught between Shakespeare and Beckett and here’s why,” I would have said, “No problem.  I don’t agree, but you’ve made a point and presented evidence to support it.” But there’s none of that here.  Instead, we have a reviewer who is clearly uncomfortable with the material, which she largely dismisses as “sensationalism” and, more troublingly, suggests that the play “blurs the line between legitimate theater and torture porn.” Torture porn?  Really?  In my first comment, I suggested Ms. Foley doesn’t know what torture porn is if she were alleging that the play was somehow on the edge of this genre.  Probably didn’t win me a lot of points in my quest to have my comment accepted.

The review has the brief de rigueur plot summary-that’s fine, as people do want a few sentences to get themselves situated - but there’s precious little review anywhere else.  Yes, it mentions the design elements, but it doesn’t evaluate them - for example, Ms. Foley calls the lighting “crepuscular”  and basically says it lights the set, which she describes as “burned-out.”  Both are descriptions, but neither is evaluative.  It’s kind of like being asked to critique a guitarist and responding that he was playing rock music.  It does note that the actors are appealing (though it doesn’t tell us how) until the direction leads them astray, but the only example to support this point of view is the comment that the play becomes a shouting match, which made me wonder which play Ms. Foley saw.  Other than the final confrontation between the brothers, Spinx and the Customer, there’s very little sustained shouting, and what shouting there is makes complete sense.

What’s perhaps most disturbing is Ms. Foley’s parenthetical comment about 11-year-old performer Ryan Hodge that “one wonders what his parents were thinking” [when allowing him to be in the play].  Ryan plays the role of the Party Piece, whose function is that of a sacrifice to gain the information that they believe will save their lives.  Yes, the characters’  actions are disturbing, but that’s part of the play’s moral dilemma - what will you do to save yourself and the ones you love?  In both attempted comments, I noted that it was unprofessional to question the parenting skills of Ryan Hodge’s parents in a theatre review - it’s a personal attack and absolutely irrelevant to the review.  I’d be willing to bet that young Ryan’s parents discussed the matter both among themselves and with the theatre company about ensuring a safe environment for their son, and having worked with many young actors myself, in cases where you have a child among adults, typically the adults go out of their way to make sure the young actor feels secure and comfortable at all times, treating them almost like their own child or younger sibling (and not the one you steal toys from or whack on the head when your parents aren’t around).  But what does any of this have to do with reviewing the play?

Mercury Fur is intense, to be sure, but it’s hardly sensationalism.  Instead, it asks such deeply human questions about the lengths to which we’ll go to maintain control of our own destiny, what it means to protect the ones we love, and the nature (and value) of our own memories.

If the LA Times is going to maintain any relevance in the rapidly changing world of the media, it’s crucial that its critics go forth and meet each play they review on its own terms, setting aside their own personal likes and dislikes to present an accurate evaluation of the work produced in the theatre.  To my mind, Mercury Fur is a failed review, and the Times should have the courage to take its lumps in the online comments section.  I can only hope that its treatment of Mercury Fur and the aftermath will prove the exception, rather than the rule, in the future.

Jonathan Dorf

Co-Chair, Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights

Jonathan Dorf is happy to display his credentials.  In addition to his work with ALAP, he is the author of more than 20 published plays that have been produced throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and a variety of other countries.  He is the Resident Playwriting Expert for Final Draft, Inc. and The Writers Store, and has served as Visiting Associate Professor of Theatre in the MFA playwriting program at Hollins University and as the US Cultural Envoy to Barbados.  He is a frequent guest artist at schools and festivals through the United States and holds a B.A. in Dramatic Writing and Literature from Harvard University and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from UCLA.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Kathleen Foley started writing theatre reviews for Drama-Logue in the 1980s while I was the editor of the publication.

Lee Melville
Editor
LA Stage Blog