Two very different kinds of reviews, and we love them both: Martin Bernheimer’s Bernheimer’s lede:<\/P> James’s lede: <\/P> Read both reviews and savour them. We could all take a lesson.<\/P> By contrast, I read a hatchet job the other day on the Roundabout Theater’s revival of The negative judgment of “Assassins” (basically, love the production \/ hate the show) He writes of Sondheim: “You can all but hear the purr of self-satisfaction in his voice, Two very different kinds of reviews, and we love them both: Martin Bernheimer’s quick dissection of “Die Walk\u00fcre” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and Clive James’s probing analysis of “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the National’s Olivier Theatre in London. Bernheimer’s lede: The Ring fanatics are here and night after night they’re filling the house. These […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-aL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ndissection<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> of “Die Walk\u00fcre” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York,
\nand Clive James’s
\nNational’s Olivier Theatre in London.<\/P>
\n
\nThe Ring<\/I> fanatics are here and night after night they’re filling the
\nhouse. These aren’t modern Wagnerites, it should be noted, who think the old mythological tales
\ncan benefit from psychological insight, social comment or political interpretation. These aren’t
\nadventurers who savour symbolism or find updating a potentially stimulating exercise. No, the
\nMet, capacity 4,000, has turned itself into a
\npretence, who want to see trees with leaves, sopranos with breastplates and villains with horned
\nhelmets. Forget Bayreuth.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\nHis nose preceding him by a quarter of an hour, the hero of
\nBergerac<\/FONT><\/I><\/B><\/A> <\/I>is a reminder that there were once things plastic
\nsurgery couldn’t do. Today it can turn Michael Jackson into his own sister. But the original
\nCyrano, furiously active as poet, swordsman and celestial fantasist in seventeenth-century France,
\nwas stuck with his deformity. … Appearance was destiny. If a man’s appearance ruled him out in
\nthe eyes of the woman he loved, there was nothing he could do about it. Except, perhaps, one
\nthing. What if he could rule himself back in through her ears?<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n
\n
\nthe Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical,
\nYork, and was flabbergasted. The headline could have been: “Kill All the Liberals.” After a lede
\nbashing New York City theater for its liberal culture and politics and the liberal circles Sondheim
\nis said to travel in, the reviewer added insult to injury by beginning his second paragraph with one
\nof those back-pedaling don’t-get-me-wrong apologies: “I speak, mind you, as a passionate admirer
\nof Mr. Sondheim …” <\/P>
\n
\nmay be correct for all I know, not yet having seen Sondheim’s dirty deed. What astonished
\nme about the piece was the unctuous tone and the impression it left of a Wall Street Journal
\nreviewer carrying water for the Journal’s liberal-bashing editorial page, which, in a peculiar
\narrangement, has authority over the paper’s arts and culture section.<\/P>
\n
\nthe sound of a rich man snuggled in the well-upholstered lap of comfortable certitude. I wonder
\nwhen he last questioned anything his fellow liberals thought about… well, anything.” Rest assured,
\nthis is not a reviewer huddled under a bridge somewhere in the unupholstered lap
\nof a cardboard box, but rather a well-fed aesthete dining
\nout comfortably on the certitude of his opinions.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"