Free Fire Zone: A Playwright's Adventures on the Creative Battlefields of Film, TV, and Theater

The year 2007 may be a banner one for Theresa Rebeck, her annus mirabilis. Her comedy The Scene opened at Second Stage in January to good reviews, including one by me. And after nine and a half plays (one was a collaboration) off-Broadway, it is on October 4 that her first Broadway play, Mauritius, opens at the Biltmore Theatre.

The estimable publisher Smith and Kraus is bringing out four books by Rebeck, Collected Plays 1989-1998, Complete Full Length Plays 1999-2007, Complete Short Plays 1989-2005 and Free Fire Zone: A Playwright's Adventures on the Creative Battlefields of Film, TV, and Theater. And since banner years need not coincide with calendar years, next spring will see the publication of her first novel, Three Girls and Their Brother.

I wish Theresa Rebeck luck with all of them. I tend to like her plays, though not every one. Years ago, after a positive review, I got her message about how pleased she was to get a good review from her favorite critic. No such communication since, whether because no subsequent review of mine was equally favorable, or because other critics gave her better reviews, or because one compliment from a playwright is all a member of that rotten confraternity deserves.

I don't know how I'll make out with this review, which is of Free Fire Zone, a volume of handy advice for whoever wants to write for any of those battlegrounds of which she is a fire-tested veteran. A review, this, not of her whole worthy endeavor, but only of the chapter that concerns me most, which is about critics.

First, I must congratulate Ms. Rebeck on her courage in writing such an outspokenly carping chapter. Practicing playwrights usually don't, either because they consider critics cockroaches not worth arguing with or, more likely, because they fear retaliation from the reviewers. Safer just to let loose the occasional potshot, like this one from Tony Kushner, which Rebeck quotes: “[Supreme Court] justices probably hate critics as much as playwrights do, at least as much as this playwright does, at least the moronic wicked corrupt critics who criticize me.” Such barbs, dipped not in venom but in infantilism, are safely disregarded by all, Supreme Court justices included.

[IMG:R]But Rebeck goes much farther: “I don't know any artist [i.e., playwright] who really has anything good to say about a critic. [Later she'll tell us about her friendship with one critic.] Theater artists hate theater critics.” As for me, I've been good friends with a couple of playwrights, and on friendly terms with others, all of whom have said good things about or to me. I doubt if they were merely acting—so convincingly that they would surely have switched to the more profitable profession of thespians.

Rebeck rehearses all the possible grievances, many of which I share. Having known slews of critics, I can affirm that good people as they are, many were lousy critics. Nevertheless, I must correct Rebeck on some points. Thus where she speculates about why TV and film writers get “less bent out of shape” about their critics, for which she gives shaky reasons.

Let us leave TV critics out of it: A very nearly hopeless field would indeed draw questionable critics. But what about film critics? Why are they better, or at least less hateful? It seems they like what they're doing more, perhaps because their medium is perceived as being central to the culture, as theater is not. Even if this were so, why should centrality make for tolerance? One can be equally benevolent at the periphery as at the center. Another possibility: big splashy press junkets—not available to theater critics—might sweeten reviews. But even Rebeck admits that this cannot be proved.

The simple truth is that most movie critics are ex-buffs, who spent their youth at the movies, day and night. This cannot be done with theater, of which there is much less—in many places none—and which costs so much more. And even where it exists, there is so much less choice; the relatively few offerings are quickly exhausted.

So the person who becomes a theater critic could not just indulge himself or herself; reading and study were necessary. Consequently, the theater critic is more cultivated, less obsessive, more aware of other things. It is, however, true that theater critics are being given less and less space, if indeed drama criticism isn't wholly discontinued. But, to forestall that, play reviews surely have to be more positive than negative.

Rebeck does admit that her one critic friend says, “Eighty percent of what we see is junk,” and that, therefore, “[playwrights] have to do better.” But if critics aren't the spur, who will be? Certainly not a public that gives standing ovations to almost everything it sees.

To be sure, Rebeck has a partial solution: Like all her colleagues, she says, she doesn't read reviews. “If you believe the good ones, you'll have to believe the bad ones, and…you'll be completely undone.” And she proceeds to give equally telling reasons for not reading other people's reviews. She does, however, enjoy book reviews (which, as yet, are not about her), and she likes “the way John Lahr writes.” That would suggest that she does read some theater reviews, unless she carefully reads Lahr only on the rare occasions when he writes about other things.

Well, so be it. But after Mauritius opens, I'll feel very sorry for Ms. Rebeck, who won't read the reviews. If they are good, what satisfaction she'll deny herself! If they are bad, whom will she be able to feel superior to?