Old-fashioned print-media critics like [Chicago Tribune's Chris] Jones and me no longer have a monopoly on drama criticism. Not only are theater-oriented blogs, message boards and chat rooms thriving, but the Web sites of a growing number of newspapers now permit readers to post their own reviews à la Amazon.com, and to do so while the shows in question are still in previews. With playgoers "publishing" their opinions of new shows whenever they please, is there any reason for producers to keep on holding critics at bay until the last minute?
Maybe not--and maybe that won't be such a bad thing.
Of course, it's not like that would actually change the economic model of American theater and give the artists any extra time to grow character in their increasingly rushed rehearsals. We'll get earlier reviews (which I'm for) but be stuck with incomplete efforts for the first few weeks of those reviews (which I'm against), and critics--who might end up seeing drastically different versions of the show--will disagree even more than they already do (which calls for an aggregate of opinion rather than a select cluster of it).
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