Grade expectations

Illustration by Nathan Huang

Broadway producer Manny Azenberg remembers a time when theater critics would rush out of their seats after the show in order to make their 11pm deadlines. Producers, not content to wait for the next day’s paper, would then bribe the printer $50 to read them the review over the phone. These producers weren’t just curious. They knew then, as now, that the entire future of a production can hinge on a few critical words.

“It’s humbling to realize your fate is based on the opinions of a handful of people,” says Azenberg, whose producing credits include Brighton Beach Memoirs and The Odd Couple. “After a bad review you’re emotionally whacked, and the whole show, maybe 150 people, could be out of work.”

In the days before press previews, critics were often recognized in the audience on opening night, and their every reaction scrutinized. “Is he is laughing, is he applauding?” says Azenberg. “There are times when you think a hit man would come in handy.”

Even worse than a somber critic, though, is a snoring critic. “You don’t want to be around to see the notorious ones sleeping in their seats or rushing out to seek further solace in alcohol during the intermissions,” says playwright Craig Lucas, who was nominated for a Pulitzer and a Tony for his Prelude to a Kiss.

But perhaps  most frustrating to Lucas are the critics who can’t remember what plays they’ve seen and can’t be bothered to check their own clips. Lucas tells the story of a “famously sad British buffoon” who wrote a very favorable review of Lucas’s Three Postcards. Years later, the same “buffoon” attended a revival, and wrote that he could not possibly have seen the original production—the play was so bad he would have remembered it. “I have the two reviews framed side by side,” says Lucas, “to remind me that one shouldn’t take anything too seriously in this life.”

That advice can be tough to remember when a literary critic’s disparaging words are bleeding through the writer’s pen. “It’s always the worst reviews that stick in your head, and they have definitely ruined afternoons of writing for me,” says Elisa Albert, whose first book, How This Night Is Different, received dozens of positive reviews but was panned by one Newsday critic. “I find myself writing self-defensive words that are actually me having a subtext conversation with the person who gave me the bad review.”

Harsh reviews that shake an artist’s confidence are bad, but far worse, according to restaurateur William Tigertt, is when you’ve just invested $4 million in a restaurant and are “depending on a three-star review to validate your prices.” Tigertt, whose wildly popular restaurant Freemans received zero stars from the Times’ Frank Bruni in September, says his staff recognized Bruni the first night he came in from a flyer supplied by a public-relations firm—complete with the critic’s photograph, known aliases and details like “he looks very young” and “his guests are very often female.”

“The whole reviewing system is rigged,” says Tigertt. “Restaurants that need excellent reviews have systems in place to [try to] get the best review.”

Those systems include hiring a “spotter,” who knows the critics well enough to identify them to management as soon as one walks in. “Or else they train the maître d’ to do it with a big book of photographs,” Tigertt says.

There was once a tradition among restaurant owners to go on a bender the night before a big review came out. The first-edition papers would hit the streets around 4:45am, shortly after closing time at the bars, and the owners would be first in line. The Internet ended that custom, along with the aforementioned bribes to the printer.

Now a critic’s judgment is posted online around 10pm, so the anticipation usually happens in front of a computer screen. But while the particulars of waiting for a review have changed, the agony is the same. Still, as the typical hour-or-so wait at Freemans on a Friday night demonstrates (as does the success of shows like Tarzan and I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, both initially trashed by critics), a bad review may be a death sentence, but it’s one that can be appealed.

As Azenberg puts it, “Word of mouth is always the ultimate critic.”