Fight! Fight! Fight!

UPDATE: Encore Theatre Magazine follows up with editorial and more reaction from London's critical elite, who have lined up as one man to scoff at Hytner's criticism. Yes, says Theatre Worker, they have been in their jobs too long. "It wouldn’t matter if any of these three men [Charles Spencer, Michael Billington and Nick de Jongh] gave you the slightest impression that they had an alertness to what is new, that they were capable of giving themselves to a piece of theatre, that they yearned to be changed by it, to risk their profoundest thoughts and feelings. They don’t."

And Bad Boy Cote responds to the righteous indignation hurled his way.

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Fans of schadenfreude should investigate the stoush enlivening the British theatre scene at the moment. Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre, swung into the enemy's territory when he told the Times that London theatre critics are a bunch of "dead white males" who demonstrate misogynistic responses to the work of women - especially gay women. Guardian critic Michael Billington almost proved Hytner's thesis about DWM by proclaiming in irresistibly Dickensian language that Hytner's attack was "balderdash and piffle", and points out (justly, of course) in a robust defence that reports of his death are premature and that the picture is more complex than simple ideas of gender.

Not, when you actually look at these things, that gender is ever a simple issue. The reliably thoughtful Lyn Garner, also of the Guardian, says that Hytner has a point, but she thinks the women simply get out more because they do the "fringey" stuff and so understand that theatre is about more than West End openings. Unspoken, of course, is the understanding that this happens because the women are often the junior partners in the critical exercise.

I think Gardner is on the money here:

...I do think that Hytner is doing a terrific job in trying to drag the National into the 21st century and reflect the experiments in form and ways of working that are taking place in British theatre. Not all of these shows will be successful, but the National should be taking risks and so should we critics, because otherwise we are acting as gate-keepers keeping innovation out - rather than doing our job and helping theatre culture grow and change.

George Hunka at Superfluities agrees that the real problem is the question of aesthetic blinkers, rather than whether the critic is old or possesses a penis. He also brings up the rather puzzling NY blogtroversy about "anti-Christian" critics, currently raging around the ears of TONY theatre editor David Cote. Rat Sass, bless him, is maintaining the rage over Cote's more recent comment, in a review, that: "Of course, if artists (or scientists) could find out why some people can’t do without supernatural bigotry, the world would be a better place... religion is bad theater for stupid people". It's baffling that a supposedly impassioned defender of that primal anti-religionist Artaud should get so exercised about defending institutional Christianity, but there we are.

In fact, they're all enjoying themselves hugely. Except possibly David Cote.