Saturday, January 24, 2009

The Clyde Fitch Report: From the Blogroll VII:

Mike also references a Gawker post about stunt casting on Broadway that is, to be blunt, a poor excuse for the writer of that post to call attention to his own ignorance and silliness and penchant for unclever whining. People, this is the theatre. It has always been, and always will be, utterly predicated on stars, at least at the commercial level. The truth is that if the dude who wrote that Gawker post had any history in his pocket, he would know that when Hollywood stars shun the stage -- as they have been wont to do in the past and shall, no doubt, be wont to do once more at some point -- everybody in the theatre will run up and down the avenues fretting about theatre not being hip and crying "How will we fill our seats" and asking "Why is the theatre so stuffy?" and on and on.

The truth is that we should be encouraging film actors to do the theater thing and critics, moreover, should stop being adenoidal idiots about it when reviewing them. I don't mean giving film stars free passes, just to be clear. What I mean that it is in the interest of the theatre to have them visit, to critique them in a way that is constructive and encourages them to return. Diddy Combs did the theatre more favors when he did A Raisin in the Sun, his, um, questionable chops aside, than anyone I can think of in the last 10 years.