Some critics, however, have more than one glass.
"You can count on someone getting tipsy," says a woman familiar with Tipplers. "[Name withheld] is one of the more notorious — if you tell her there's champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries, she'll be there."
Illustration by Jesse Lefkowitz
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No publicist interviewed for this article said he or she would physically prevent uninvited critics from attending a reception, although the presence of the uninvited can become vexing, especially after a few glasses of inducement.
"There's one writer who'll both review the play and also cover the after-party," says the foodie publicist. "At one reception, she became rude to the person pouring the drinks. At this event, we passed out drink tickets that covered soft drinks, beer or wine — you had to pay for cocktails. She insisted on being served a Bailey's Cream for her ticket, and the producer got involved because the caterers needed his permission."
This same publicist remembers an opening-night catered party at a private home: "It must have been around 3:30 in the morning, and I looked and there was actually a critic there, with her friend, drinking. 'Did you have a nice time? We're all leaving now,' I asked, trying to hint. She was very wasted."
Fressers and Tipplers occasionally provide a kind of Runyonesque color to a reception. But then there are the Willy Lomans, critics who use parties as sales sessions to pitch their own projects — or just themselves.
"I do have male critics," says a publicist, "who like to stalk the younger, hotter cast boys and come to the party for that reason."
Mostly, though, a Willy Loman is there to sell, not hunt. One publicist recalls the night he'd comped a man who claimed "to promote a community of theatergoers" through a paid online listings service. Later, at the party, held at a Hard Rock Cafe, the publicist was frantically taken aside by his normally mild-mannered boss.
"That man is going around to party guests and passing out his business card and fliers!" the publicist was told.
The house publicist for a long-established theater recalls another reviewer, who worked opening-night parties for his publisher's benefit.
"This gentleman kept forcing himself on us to advertise in his small paper," the publicist says. "He actually pulled out a rate sheet at receptions. Once he showed up to interview our artistic director — with his advertising rep!"
"During the play, [name withheld] made overt faces, but then she goes to the reception and proceeds to become publicly belligerent."
The woman telling me this is a longtime Los Angeles theater publicist and producer. The person she is describing is a newspaper critic who attended the opening night of a play.
"She goes up to the playwright," the producer-publicist continues, "and in front of his cast and director, says, 'Your play is awful and you don't know how to write, but at least you're cute.' She ripped his heart out. He was devastated."
Welcome to the world of the Angries. These are critics who, fired by wine, bad moods or extreme aesthetic values, can't resist leaving a verbal foretaste of their reviews or acting out their own personal dramas.
"We just had a really ugly altercation with someone we'd been dealing with for 20 years and who went way over the line," says a prominent publicist. "He went backstage and became obnoxious with the cast members — critiquing them to their faces, telling them they hadn't lived up to the material. We had to call security because he wouldn't leave."
To their dismay, some theater people will encounter an Angry who breaks the fourth wall — and lumbers into their lives.
"There's one guy who is so obnoxious and really loud," says a publicist. "He'll walk out during intermission or talk to his wife during shows. By coincidence, my parents met him on a cruise — they thought he was the most obnoxious person on the ship. Later, at home, he joined their bridge club and the club had to kick him out!"
Angries needn't always be angry. In a world where literally everyone, thanks to the Internet, is a critic, the line between private kink and public behavior gets increasingly blurred, especially for those critics who'll seek out high-profile playwrights to autograph their programs or who'll insist on speaking to the actors after the show. All, presumably, for research. Sometimes "civilians" will impersonate a critic to pursue other agendas. Over the last two years, local theater watchers have been roiled by alarms sounded in the posts of the Big Cheap Theater message board regarding a certain "Alan Brown." Brown claimed to be a theater critic, but his real expertise apparently lay in foot fetishism — during performances, he'd take photos of actresses onstage and would go backstage and ask to take pictures of their feet. (Click here for an example of Brown's work; click here for a firsthand account of Brown's antics.)
One publicist for a small theater that had been stung several times by this shutterbug pressed for the man to show him some of his reviews, only to be met with silence. Brown was eventually run to ground through word spread on BCT. (Actually, he simply vanished.) The publicist for the theater conned by Brown is stoic about critics and crashers, and reviewers and impersonators.
"From my viewpoint," he says, "once the critic shows up, I've done my job."
For a discussion of the proliferation of theater critics, see Les Spindle's article on backstage.blogs.com and Sylvie Drake's article in LA Stage.
