Are our drama critics 'dead white men'?

The artistic director of the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, has made a surprise announcement. As reported in The Times last Monday, he has declared that a large number of leading British drama critics are dead. Given that just two years ago the NT staged Theatre of Blood, a blackly comic thriller where a crazed thespian serially slaughtered critics, it is, at least, a relief to learn that Hytner has not been so stung by a few bad notices as to actually terminate the aforementioned journalists.

He was, in fact, alleging that several senior reviewers on the dailies were culturally moribund. "They would be horrified by the accusation, but I'm afraid I'm making it," he stated. "It's fair enough to say that too many of the theatre critics are dead white men." Noting that several were already reviewing when he was at university, he volunteered that he would not stay in his job for that long.

Still more polemically, he claimed that veteran reviewers specifically register female directors, have penned "misogynistic" critiques of the NT's Katie Mitchell, and that gay women, "really get it in the neck and there is a lot of sniggering". He added that the female critics were voluble about all this in private and he welcomed the fact that, in the Sundays, some women's voices were getting heard.

The most immediate cause of his irritation appears to have been negative write-ups in the dailies, criticising the NT's latest production, A Matter of Life and Death, directed by Emma Rice of the physical theatre troupe Kneehigh. Hytner had predicted that the Sundays' female critics would be much more appreciative.

His condemnatory remarks have caused considerable consternation as well as incredulous scoffs. It has certainly sparked a lively battle of words. The Times critic Benedict Nightingale riposted, on what he happily acknowledged was his 68th birthday. He underlined that, for sure, he had not loved Mitchell's Seagull but he gave her Iphigenia five stars and, moreover, rates her and Deborah Warner as two of Britain's finest directors.

Michael Billington, the UK's longest-standing drama critic, having written consistently for The Guardian since 1971, likewise called Hytner's notion of a gender war, with reviewers supporting their biological home team, "pure fantasy". The Evening Standard's Nicholas de Jongh reacted characteristically strongly, dubbing the accusations an alarming and extraordinarily bilious declaration of war that set up an unhelpful, "embattled them-and-us attitude". Meanwhile, Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph has wryly highlighted that Hytner - at 51 - is virtually his coeval. And the same goes for The Independent's top reviewer, Paul Taylor.

Beyond that, the accusation thrown back at Hytner is that - in contrast to his general political correctness and good humour - he has exposed himself as a shocking ageist bigot.

Has Hytner got a leg to stand on? The dailies' leading critics are, certainly, predominantly male, though Sarah Hemming and Ian Shuttleworth (who is 43) have just become joint first stringers at the Financial Times, after Alastair Macaulay was headhunted by The New York Times. Lyn Gardner and Fiona Mountford are the second stringers at The Guardian and the Evening Standard respectively, while Jane Edwards is the long-standing chief critic at London's weekly guide, Time Out, now with Rachel Halliburton as her deputy. Most of the female critics are under 50.

And theatregoers' comparative age and gender? The most recent Mori survey for the Society of London Theatres (from 2003) says that the ratio is 35 per cent male to 65 per cent female (though more women may have filled in the questionnaire). As for the age of audience members, the distribution is fairly even for each 10-year age group of over 25s, over 35s, over 45s and over 55s (18 to 20 per cent per group), with 17 per cent made up of under-25s and with over-65s falling away to 10 per cent. Most plays are still written by men though more young women dramatists are emerging.

Speaking as The Independent on Sunday's female theatre critic, I have to say that - regarding Hytner's comments - obviously it is nice to be acknowledged and the suggestion that one is, somehow, in touch or especially cutting-edge is, of course, flattering. I also admit that I do, once in a blue moon, wonder if the female critics appreciate some kinds of theatre more than their male counterparts - maybe physical and experimental theatre or certain plays written by women. But that such issues are volubly discussed in private is news to me.

Might there be some different sensibilities woven into our genes or socially conditioned? I suppose that is possible. But good theatre presents the viewer with observations about the human condition with which they - whether male or female - can immediately connect. Good theatre also vitally expands one's understanding of others' experiences.

Gardner argues in her blog that if she and other female critics respond differently to other critics, "it is quite simply because we get out more and see a wider range of work". She says they are familiar with the fringe theatre and the vocabulary of experimentalists Hytner is now encouraging at the National. Yet de Jongh underlines that he too has watched physical and experimental theatre for years and is still bowled over by plenty of it.

Two X chromosomes don't guarantee anyone a good review or a bad one. I do not care if a creative artist is male or female. I care if their work is good or not, if it is in any way - aesthetically, intellectually, emotionally, socially - interesting or not. I believe that this is true of every other critic I have mentioned, though our opinions differ.

Neat divisions along gender lines are very much the exception. Take A Matter of Life and Death. I thought it was often exhilaratingly imaginative and playful, and Susannah Clapp of The Observer loved it. But Georgina Brown of The Mail on Sunday did not. Michael Billington hailed it as a fascinating reappraisal of the film, brimming with an urgent sense of life, flawed only by a lack of narrative dynamic. There's crusty sexist vitriol for you.

Hytner deserves sustained applause for supporting Mitchell. I adamantly disagree with those who write off her current avant-garde work as taking impudent and pretentious liberties with classic texts. I think she is truly world class and sensitively intelligent. But then so does Paul Taylor, who greeted her recent take on Virginia Woolf's The Waves as an ingenious and incrementally moving production of marvellous calibre and coherence.

I have not heard any sniggering about lesbian directors. As for misogyny, I have never encountered an iota from my colleagues. I got started as a critic in my mid-twenties by sending a review I had written to Michael Billington and, though he didn't know me from Adam or Eve, the next thing I knew I was writing up a fringe production of 120 Days of Sodom for The Guardian.

The real worry now is not that the long-respected veteran critics will never vacate their posts. When they do take their final bow, it is, dismally, no longer certain that a proper successor - one who knows the scene through having climbed up the reviewing ladder - will be appointed in their place. Besides the squeeze that has been put on reviews in terms of column inches in many papers, complete theatrical ingénues and celebrity names are now being used to fill some vacated posts.

Dumbed-down reviews are not what those with a real interest in the theatre want to read. Nick Hytner might one day miss the serious dedication and vital enthusiasm of those so-called "dead white men".

MEDIA DIARY

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