A gift for rhetoric

It’s always puzzled me that so few theatre critics are involved in making (rather than interpreting, dissecting and sometimes destroying) theatre. Hats off to Time Out reviewer Robert Shore, who’s quitted the breaker’s yard for the production line. Anxious about this new departure, he admits he ‘finds criticism almost impossible to bear’, although he ‘doesn’t mindpointing out problems with other people’s work’. Yeah, I know the feeling.

In his new play, The Critic, a sneering old-school reviewer (bow tie, goatee, crimson dressing-gown) is ambushed in his house by two actors whose performances he has rubbished. Nice idea. Shore relies heavily on his gift for rhetoric and he brilliantly articulates the mood of frustration and boredom which is the constant mental state of the reviewer. ‘You have stolen a night of my life!’ cries Harry Meacher in a terrific performance as the queeny, preeny critic. And the play boasts a wonderful surprise ending in the shape of Saskia Willis who suddenly…well, I’d better not give it away.