The Mirror up to Nature

The Mirror up to Nature:  Morality Bites:

She ends her piece this way: "But that, of course, is a moral judgement, isn't it? The question here is really this: do a critic's personal morals or ethical code have any place in a review? And conversely, humans being the way they are, how can one possibly pretend they don't?"

I remember at the time Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive was gathering rave reviews on its way to getting the Pulitzer, John Heilpern penned a review that I think was headlined, "Come and See the Safe Pedophilia!" It really threw a harsh moral light onto the proceedings and took the playwright up on her comparisons to Nabokov.

I am paraphrasing, but I think Heilpern said something along the lines of "Aren't some things just black and white, right and wrong." I'll dig out my copy of Heilpern's collection of reviews: "How Good is David Mamet Anyway?"

Louise Kennedy, the lead theatre critic for the Globe, has often expressed her skepticism and weariness in approaching plays that treat mental illness as metaphor.