Charles Not in Charge, Ctd

A blast from the past, from David Ng's Oct. 2007 profile of Adam Rapp in American Theatre (as quoted in this space):

Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power of the Times is discouraging. It's killing new plays, demolishing one after another. Charles Isherwood and Ben Brantley have a lot of power. I would like to think that Michael Feingold, Jeremy McCarter and David Cote and people who are really interested in new work would have an equal distribution of power. But we're so governed by the Times. Everyone is so afraid to talk about it, which is what I hate. Now that I've been demolished by them, I'm not going to be afraid to talk about it.

Gus Schulenberg makes an excellent point in the comments (namely, that this whole who-likes-new-plays demarcation is flawed).

And though I've since seen work by Rapp that made me like him less, I more or less stand by this qualified appreciation, on the occasion of one of Isherwood's most scathing pans.