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Alec Baldwin, Stung by Early Closing of “Orphans,” Bites Back at New York Times

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Using his perch at the Huffington Post, Alec Baldwin launched a full frontal attack on Ben Brantley, the chief theater critic of the New York Times, in an essay titled “How Broadway Has Changed.” In it, he blames the early closing this Sunday of “Orphans” — in which he co-stars with Tom Sturridge and Ben Foster — in part on the dismissive review for the show in the Paper of Record. Baldwin noted that he had chosen to return to the commercial theater only after an absence of 21 years, since appearing as Stanley in the 1992 production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” opposite Jessica Lange. He implied that performing in the non-profit theater world made actors and productions less vulnerable to the damaging and, according to him, senseless “Why bother?” approach of Brantley’s criticism. The essay included ad hominem attacks on the critic and compared him unfavorably to his powerful predecessor, Frank Rich, and to his New York Times colleague and fellow theater critic Charles Isherwood. (Rich, by the way, wrote very favorably of Baldwin’s Stanley.)

There is nothing new, of course, in producers and artists retaliating against critics who rain on their parade, especially the reviewer for the Times, whose opinion tends to carry the most weight among the ticket-buying public. Rich famously endured vitriolic attacks for his caustic dismissals of shows, made even more hurtful because they were so well written and reasoned. In one memorable episode, his 1992 pan of “Metro,” a musical import from Poland, included a suggestion that instead of buying tickets for the show, New Yorkers should buy the cast consolatory steak dinners. The entire cast in turn showed up in the lobby of the New York Times with steak dinners for Rich from Sardi’s Restaurant while cameras flashed and theater writers reported on the contretemps.

Now, thanks to the Internet, the forum in which artists and producers can push back against bad reviews has expanded, and those attacks can go viral. Consequently, they are on the increase. I recently moderated a panel for the American Theatre Wing on the effects that social media has on leading New York theater critics. The guests included Peter Marks of the Washington Post, Charles Isherwood of the New York Times, and Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post. Also commenting on the new developments was Lisa Fung, the founding editor of Culture Monster, the arts and culture blog of the Los Angeles Times.

At one point in the conversation, I asked them if they now felt more exposed because of the Internet and how they dealt with the vituperative comments. “With lots of Xanax,” quipped Isherwood, adding that a peer had compared Internet responses to his judgments as “thoughtless graffiti scrawled upon his reviews.” Furthermore, he felt that newspapers, by offering a forum for their readers to respond to reviews, were tacitly saying, “Well, everyone else have at him.” Nonetheless, they all seemed to agree that the Internet had leveled the playing field to some extent and made the process much more democratic. “I think it’s a more entertaining world than it was 20 years ago writing about the theater,” said Marks. “I don’t feel threatened by those changes. It’s a completely evolving world.”

At any rate, when a critic is attacked as publicly as Baldwin attacked Brantley, it is incumbent upon editors and the newspaper in question to circle the wagons. Baldwin’s piece on Brantley probably has served only to enhance his position at the Times among his bosses. “They’re not about to be seen as taking advice from a blowhard like Baldwin,” said a friend who’s a staffer there. “They actually love this stuff.” And “Orphans” will still close on the 19th. It was dismal ticket sales, not Brantley, which doomed that production.

As a postscript, Herbert Blau, the iconoclastic and outspoken director who recently died, once observed in print that Walter Kerr — the chief theater critic of the New York Herald Tribune and, later, of the New York Times — was “a cancer on the American theater.” There is now a Broadway theater named for Walter Kerr.

Image: Harel Rintzler/PatrickMcMullan.com


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