The Playgoer: Not Bitter...

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Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Not Bitter...

...but I do find it interesting that only a couple of Sundays ago (2/26/06) New York Times Arts & Leisure had no problem citing a theatre website by name and yet today could not. The only difference was, the reference was to a chatroom, not a blog, and the subject was Les Miz:

Certainly when it comes to quick comebacks, the choice of show matters. ''Les Miz,'' with its grand themes, inspired grand passions among fans happy to see the show more than once. For some theatergoers, then, the comfort of nostalgia may indeed outweigh the thrill of the new.On All That Chat, the message board at talkinbroadway.com, Marco49 was happy to hear about ''Les Miz'': ''It never shouldhave left,'' he wrote, ''and I hope they extend its six-month return!'' Bandboy, on the other hand, felt that it was ''sad that it has come to this.''

What does this tell us? Something bigger I hope than Playgoer's sour grapes. The logic (if I may attribute the decision to logic) would appear to be that the web is a legitimate source of gossip and "man on the street" populism...but not for more serious discourse or reporting. But someone please explain how, from a journalistic view, "Marco49's" gushing over Les Miz is categorically distinguishable from Christopher Shinn posting a--shall we say more thoughtful?--bit of commentary on Playgoer?

Except that one helps the theatre biz and one doesn't. But let's not go there.

I promise that's the end of Playgoer's blogosphere-martyr complex.

Addendum: Duh! Someone just pointed out to me this sentence in Tuesday's NYT article right before the "Playgoer paragraph":
In a letter posted on the political Web site Counterpunch.org, for example,
the actress Vanessa Redgrave, a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause, called the workshop's decision "censorship of the worst kind" and the "blacklisting of a dead girl and her diaries."
So I guess "Counterpunch" counts, too. (Ok, now that's the end.)

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