The Stage

Survey - critics still crucial to theatre

Published Thursday 6 May 2010 at 11:08 by Alistair Smith

An overwhelming majority of theatre audiences and professionals believe that critics are still important to the industry, according to a survey conducted by The Stage.

Almost nine out of ten respondents (89%) to our questionnaire believe that critics still play a valuable role in theatre, although nearly half (46%) think they are less important than they were a decade ago. The survey was completed by around 350 people via www.thestage.co.uk and a form in our print edition.

The results will make reassuring reading for critics at a time when newspapers in the UK and the US have made widespread cutbacks on in-house reviewers. Meanwhile, the ongoing rise of the internet and social media has raised questions over the future role that critics will play in the theatre industry.

According to the survey, though, 80% of respondents feel that professional critics will still be important to the industry in ten years’ time.

Newspaper critics are not the most trusted source of opinion on theatre productions, however. They were narrowly beaten by word of mouth, voted for by 47% of respondents, compared to 44% for critics.

The least trusted source of information by far was internet discussion. Only 3% of people rated it as their most valued source of opinion, while more than half said it was their least valued source.

Meanwhile, the most widely read newspaper critic is Michael Billington, with nearly half (48%) of all respondents saying they regularly read his reviews. Billington was also the most trusted critic, with 12% of respondents rating him as their most valued newspaper critic.

In the survey, we also asked respondents to list non-print sources, such as blogs and websites, that they particularly valued for their critical opinions. West End Whingers, the online bloggers who famously coined the name Paint Never Dries in reference to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies, were the most popular online choice by some distance.

One respondent wrote: “West End Whingers. This is serious competition to the newspapers and the only theatre bloggers worth producers getting in a tizzy about.” However, another questioned whether the bloggers had become less effective because they had begun operating more like traditional critics, writing: “The West End Whingers have declined since they began too eagerly to play the freebies game and became digested by the machinery.”

Radio 4’s Front Row programme was also recommended by a number of respondents.

For full results see this week’s print edition of The Stage