Shouts and Murmurs - January 7, 2025
My new year's resolution is to keep providing you with quality theatre newsletters. Plus: a round-up of the best theatre writing elsewhere.
Hello, and welcome to Shouts And Murmurs, a weekly email for paid supporters of The Crush Bar, written by me, Fergus Morgan.
Every week, I round up the best theatre writing elsewhere - news, reviews, interviews, opinion pieces, long-reads - plus any other interesting or inspiring theatre stuff I find.
At the moment, you can only read the top section for free, but you have to pay if you want to read everything on the other side of the paywall. It costs a mere £5/month or £50/year.
Thanks for reading The Crush Bar, as always. If you want to do me a quick favour, then you can share this newsletter far and wide and encourage others to subscribe via the button below.
Previously in The Crush Bar:
Do you have a New Year’s resolution? Well, I do.
Hello. Welcome back. Did you have a good break? I did. Thanks for asking. I spent a happy fortnight assuaging family tensions by stuffing my face with mince pies. Now, like Captain Ahab chasing the White Whale, I am compelled to return to my tired laptop to pursue theatre-related, newsletter-based professional fulfilment.
The most interesting piece I read over Christmas – well, the most interesting piece relevant to our shared interests, reader – was this bit from Iain Overton about the decline of cultural critics and the rise of algorithmically obsessed influencers.
“Once, critics were cultural cartographers, mapping art, literature and architecture with insight and vision… They were provocateurs of thought, inspiring audiences to engage with the world more deeply. Today, their role has largely been usurped by ideologues and algorithms. In place of thoughtful analysis, we see clickbait, performative outrage, and shallow commentary optimised for engagement rather than substance.”
This analysis is broadly accurate, I think. When it comes to theatre, though, it is only half-true. Theatre, like most artforms, has seen a decline in genuine criticism over the last decade. There are plenty of brilliant reviewers still plying their trade - many of whom I have deep respect and admiration for - but we have lacked a critical colossus – someone able to insightfully and articulately commentate on the artform and its wider artistic, ideological and economic evolution to a large audience – ever since Michael Billington retired from The Guardian in 2019. Only here, north of Hadrian’s Wall, is there someone offering a similar calibre of criticism in Joyce McMillan.
That said, I think theatre has, by-and-large, escaped influencer-itis. Carving out a questionable career in online engagement requires, well, engagement, and theatre is simply too niche a topic to generate enough clicks to make that equation stack up. There is no theatrical equivalent of Mr Beast, or Dude Perfect, or Sidemen, after all.
That is both a shame and a blessing, both an awkward truth and an opportunity. It seems sad that theatre is not culturally relevant enough – whatever that means – to cut-through in the ruthless world of the algorithm, but it also feels like a reprieve from the laziest, most facetious phenomena of that ecosystem - the clickbait headlines, the reaction videos - and the chance to build something better.
Here is Overton again on whether or not the role of the cultural critic can be revived…
“Reversing this decline requires a collective commitment to prioritise quality over engagement. We must fund cultural institutions, support thoughtful platforms, and foster environments where intellectual dissent thrives. Critics must reclaim their roles as navigators of meaning, not pastiche provocateurs. Good critics can rise again - if we choose to value their role as cultural cartographers, illuminating the way forward in an increasingly disorienting world.”
I think theatre is perfectly placed for all that. It big enough to intellectually sustain a critical culture, yet offline and small enough to escape the attention of the algorithm, It is well positioned to support a new era of criticism, one that engages in the artform beyond star-ratings, that challenges ideas, contemplates developments and joins dots.
Casting any modesty aside, that is not a million miles from what I am trying to do with The Crush Bar, or what Natasha Tripney is doing with Café Europa, or what Holly Williams and her team are doing with Exeunt. Whether it is Tripney on theatre’s involvement on the protests taking place in Serbia, or Tim Bano on the artistic evolution of Rob Icke, or yours truly on Rupert Goold’s reign at the Almeida Theatre – please ignore some of the other crap I write – there is a semi-concerted attempt to revive a form of theatre-focused cultural criticism here on Substack, away from the more algorithm-governed platforms. It is a criticism that is multifarious, pluralistic, playful and passionate. I am not saying it has the intellectual heft and reach of the critical colossi of yesteryear - Billington I am not - but hey, baby steps. This newsletter will soon reach 4000 subscribers. Others are making similar strides.
So, do I have a New Year’s resolution? Yes, I do. It is, to paraphrase Alan Bennett, to keep on keeping on with The Crush Bar, and collaborate with others to build a space for a culture of theatre criticism to survive and thrive. Maybe yours could be to help?
Quick point-of-order: I know I have fallen into that irritating Substack habit of repeatedly writing about Substack in recent weeks. I promise that was the last bit like that for ages.
In other news: Bristol Old Vic Theatre School will close its undergraduate courses due to spiralling costs; Edinburgh International Festival is struggling for cash, too; Cameron Mackintosh is doing alright, though; Stage Directors UK wants subsidy to be reserved for venues with creative leaderships; an adaptation of Roddy Doyle’s Two Pints will run in Coventry; Anne-Marie Duff and Eleanor Lloyd got OBEs.