That's a relief. When I reviewed the Rachel Corrie play at the Royal Court I couldn't believe how out-of-step I was with the other critics.
Raves all round. As I said the other day, the off-Broadway response has been a lot more mixed. I was particularly keen to see what Terry Teachout would make of it in the WS Journal. His review is firewalled, unfortunately, but here's a taste:
It's an ill-crafted piece of goopy give-peace-a-chance agitprop -- yet it's being performed to cheers and tears before admiring crowds of theatre-savvy New Yorkers who, like Mr [Alan] Rickman himself, ought to know better. So why don't they? Because Palestine is the new Cuba, a political cause whose invocation has the effect of instantaneously anesthetizing the upper brain functions of those who believe in it....
In an act of unintended self-revelation, "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" ends with a film clip of the 10-year-old Corrie prattling away like a baby robot at her elementary school's Fifth Grade Press Conference on World Hunger: "My dream is to give the poor a chance.... My dream can and will come true if we all look into the future and see the light that shines there." She grew older but no wiser, and in the end died a martyr to her own naïveté.
"My Name Is Rachel Corrie," is a scrappy, one-sided monologue consisting of nothing but the fugitive observations of a young woman who, like so many idealists, treated her emotions as facts... To mistake such jejune disillusion for profundity and turn it into the climax of a full-length play is an act of piety, not artistry.
Knowing what theatre publicists are like, I fully expect his piece to be boiled down to something along the lines of "Cheers and tears... profundity...artistry" -- Terry Teachout.
Thanks to Tom Gross for the tip. On a much lighter note, he links to some entertaining music spoofs including this exceptionally classy effort - George Bush and special guests performing a cover version of Imagine.
UPDATE: Good news... the whole of the Teachout article is now on-line.