I have a lot of friends—particularly theatre friends—who pay no attention whatsoever to their reviews. They don't want to be swayed by the critics, perhaps. Or don’t want to be made to feel self-conscious about their performances. Or maybe they don’t care.
I care, unfortunately.
I’ve performed all over the place, and I’ve been reviewed all over the place, geographically and figuratively. I’ve been fortunate enough to receive favorable reviews from a lot of critics, but I’ve also been completely ignored, even as a principal character in a show, as if I weren’t on the stage at all on review night.
And you know, both are fine. Because neither is really the truth.
Reviews are just opinions, after all—even when they’re grounded in evidence and written by experts—and opinions, by definition, are one person’s perspective, one person’s version of a thing. I have a version. The critic has a version. Often we agree. Sometimes we don’t.
When I was performing Diana in NEXT TO NORMAL, I had help from a mentor—a beautiful, smart woman who lived with Bipolar Disorder and talked me through the reality of her diagnosis on the ground. For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll call her Shelly.
One night, for a performance that included a talkback and post-show reception, my mentor came. So did her father.
After the show and talkback (which Shelly participated in), we met up for the reception at a nearby bar, chatting over custom cocktails and glasses of wine. My stage manager asked Shelly’s dad what he thought of our performance.
He sipped his drink and looked down for a while, lost in thought. When he looked up, his eyes were shiny. “You know, I didn’t realize what Shelly goes through every day, until I saw this show. I think I’ve been going about my relationship with her all wrong.”
Sitting in the audience, Shelly’s dad saw something in my performance that shifted his paradigm. My performance, at least as he admitted that night, had an impact on the way he viewed his own daughter.
I like to say that what other people think of me is none of my business, which is true. In theatre and writing that can be hard to remember when reviewers make it your business. They make it everyone’s business, because it’s the critic’s job to do that.
I try not to believe anything that’s said or written about me too much—not the hype or the crap. Because all of it is a little true and a little bullish*t.
But Shelly’s dad? His takeaway after my performance that night?
That was the best review I ever got.