The Sunday Papers: Leisure & Leisure

Today's Times Arts & Leisure theatre section is particularly pathetic. This page (yes, now a single page) is one of the most important organs of theatre coverage in the nation. That they can't come up with more than a celebrity profile of Elizabeth Berkley (no matter how much irony Isherwood masks it with) and a pr-bought promo for a minor independent producing team (masking as a women's theatre collective)... well, it doesn't bode well for what we can expect from major-media arts coverage in the future. (Oh save us, Columbia Journalism!)

The full effect of the glossy superficiality of this is best gotten in the print edition. In the link above, see top two stories. The third, a love-letter to the Redgraves from the bite-sized "Directions" page, is the icing on the cake.

Then, to feel like a person with a brain again, read the Charles McNulty's Village Voice interview with Vanessa Redgrave (along with a multi-bite discussion of her upcoming Hecuba) for the kind of article we used to expect from theatre journalism.