A Critique of a Theater Critic

“Bully ‘Matilda’ director ‘threatens’ child actors”

That is the title of an article written by Michael Riedel, the gossip swirling, seedy theater columnist for the Post. Certainly an attention grabbing headline, but like many of Riedel’s columns, this one makes you feel as though you have surely violated someone’s privacy after reading it. Riedel’s story is based off of a private letter in which a member of Matilda's Broadway management team, Alissa Zulvergold, wrote producers to express her concern about the way the children in the show were being treated by one of the associate directors, Thomas Caruso. Riedel was able to snag a copy via one of his many “sources.”

                                                            Michael Reidel (Source: www.vulture.com)

Zulvergold details a few incidents where Caruso yelled at some of the kids in the cast during rehearsals. No matter what has transpired between Caruso and the Matilda kids, stories like these make me question Mr. Riedel’s integrity as a theater journalist. There is no doubt that the role of a theater journalist is to challenge the art in an attempt to make it better. But that’s just it – the role is to challenge the art, not to expose the private affairs of a show in a fluffed up, barely newsworthy, gossip column that has almost nothing to do with the art that takes place on stage. Rather than writing columns that critique what takes place on stage in the hopes of lifting the art form, Mr. Riedel consistently tries to destroy it (for reference, see all of his “reporting” on the Spiderman saga). In a more recent column, Riedel reveals information from yet another “source” that Harvey Weinstein, the producer of Finding Neverland, now having it’s out-of-town tryout in Boston, is unhappy with the show’s male lead, Jeremy Jordan, and would like him replaced before the show moves to Broadway. My guess would be that Mr. Jordan was not too excited to hear that his livelihood was in jeopardy from a newspaper article. The worst part about Mr. Riedel’s column is that not only does he expose the private, personal matters of people like Caruso and Jordan, he seems to take a great deal of pleasure in doing it.

And Riedel’s “sources” that he quotes in his articles as being his eyes and ears feeding him information are equally as guilty in this as he is in hurting the art of theater. It is time to start supporting theater, rather than tearing it apart.