Martin Kohn signs off from reviewing after fifty years
DETROIT, Mich.–On August 22, 1967, I wrote my first play review.
As of August 22, 2017, I have written my last.
My health is good, I continue to write, play music and otherwise keep busy, but 50 years—with interruptions–of coming up with new and exciting ways of saying “it sucks” (or it doesn’t) is enough.
I know the date of that first review because I have it in a scrapbook. It ran in the New Haven Register when I was a summer intern. The editor asked if anyone wanted to review a show that evening. I raised my hand.
The show was a production of “Sweet Charity” at a big summer playhouse in Wallingford, Conn. I wasn’t crazy about the show but its star, some woman named Chita Rivera, could sing and dance like nobody’s business. I wonder what ever happened to her?
What possessed me to volunteer that morning? A confession: I knew who Chita Rivera was. I had seen her in the original production of “Bye Bye Birdie” on Broadway, with Dick Van Dyke. I’d also seen Robert Preston in “The Music Man,” Mary Martin in “Peter Pan;” not to mention “My Fair Lady,” “The Most Happy Fella,” “Flower Drum Song,” “An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May,” “No Time For Sergeants,” which starred a 29-year-old Andy Griffith.
Yes, Andy Griffith was once 29 and I was once a kid from Brooklyn who’d seen more plays than movies.
So I raised my hand. Also, it got me out of covering a meeting of the West Haven Zoning Board.
Until the VCR came along (an early version of Video on Demand; ask your parents) I had still seen more plays than movies; given my work as a theater critic, that may hold true today.
As a child I simply enjoyed plays and musicals. Nobody told me I should. And although we read a lot of Shakespeare in high school and were required to write analytical papers, I never thought critically about theater or considered that it might have relevance to my life.
Until.
There was this production of “The Glass Menagerie” on Broadway in 1965. I was in college and although I’d done some acting and taken a few classes I’d never seen or read the play. I’ve seen it many times since and I’m always finding something new but here’s what I remember from that first time:
It’s about a very nice, wise-cracking guy who lives at home and whose mother is always in his face.
I could relate. And it got me thinking.
And I haven’t stopped thinking about, or being affected by, theater and I have no plans to stop. But the pen and the notebook are getting a well-deserved rest.
Encore Michigan has truly been an encore for me, providing another decade of reviewing after I took a buyout at the Free Press. I was the last full-time paid theater critic in Detroit; I suspect there will never be another one.
Nov. 30, 2007, the day I left the Free Press, I was joined by the movie critic and the TV critic. The book critic was long gone and the classical music, jazz and art critic (all in one person), took a buyout more recently. Not one of us has been replaced.
I don’t mean to pick on my former employer: this is the state of arts criticism around the country, with notable exceptions. It’s about money (it’s always about money), which these days means numbers of clicks on a screen.
Even 10 or 12 years ago, when counting screen-views was becoming a thing, arts coverage in Detroit was attracting nowhere the numbers racked up by sports news or coverage of the auto industry. The only time a theater story came close was when I wrote a front-page story about nudity on stage.
Money talks, the arts walk.
I needn’t tell you that’s why something like Encore Michigan matters so much. I’m proud to have been associated with Encore and I thank Don Calamia and David Kiley for letting me extend my reviewing years.
I’ve seen theater on Broadway, off Broadway, off-off Broadway and way off Broadway; in London, in Boston, in Bennington, Providence, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Louisville, Minneapolis, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ashland, Stratford, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Toronto, Tempe, Ariz., and, top this if you can, Cow Head, Newfoundland.
On a very good day Michigan theater can stand with the best of them. I expect, and wish for all of you, many such days ahead.
Theater critic may sound like a great job but Laura maintains that she’s had the best job of all: theater critic’s wife—all the enjoyment, none of the work. I look forward to joining her in this occupation.
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And a little extra: