Covering the Abbey complaints: Journalists need to get a grip when reporting on theatre

Newstalk's The Hard Shoulder showed poor research in its coverage but it did allow host Ivan Yates to interview a theatre worker as if greeting an old peacocking friend. Photo: Newstalk

There’s a scene in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play The Critic when two theatre journalists are charmed by a press agent. As his name suggests, Mr. Puff is adept at planting flattering theatre reviews in newspapers. “The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed,” he says.

For Puff, the ideal theatre review needs to be crammed with superlatives: “The unrivalled genius of the author - that universal and judicious actor - the miraculous powers of the scene painter’s pen.” Who knows what the play was really like.

The exaggeration of puff writing still creeps into the worst reviews but it’s strange when used by the mainstream media to report on theatre. Last month on Twitter, RTÉ’s Prime Time announced their guest, actor Stephen Brennan, as a “doyen of Irish stagecraft,” as if advertising a performance at Dublin’s old Theatre Royal. It’s an oddly timed epithet for a performer, with over four decades’ experience, coming to explain why his colleagues are close to the poverty line. 

Brennan discussed the letter of complaint against the Abbey Theatre delivered to the Minister for Culture. Now signed by at least 409 artists, it lists concerns about contract periods drastically shortened by co-production, and artists being paid on lesser-independent company rates. The letter makes two demands: increase the number of in-house productions, and give all artists national theatre rates. 

We rely on journalists to keep the facts clear but much of the reportage resembled scenes from a thriller.  “An unprecedented bombshell landed on the desk of Culture Minister Josepha Madigan,” began Katy Hayes in the Irish Independent, describing a back-and-forth where “the Abbey came back fighting”. Emer O’Kelly, also posing as a detonations expert, described “a letter of explosive protest against current policy at the Abbey Theatre”. Some weeks later Deirdre Falvey in the Irish Times offered a Dantean but no less serious lede: “January was hell for theatre people”.

That risks the media looking trivial at a moment of significant dispute. In the same week that the letter of complaint arrived, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation decided workers’ conditions were unacceptable. “Nurses are planning to stage six strikes over pay in the weeks ahead,” wrote the Irish Times’ Martin Wall without colour. Journalists writing about theatre should stick as close to the facts. 

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the precarious lives of theatre workers have come to attention just as another sector is striking for restoration of pre-austerity wages. Last month Theatre Forum presented a new report finding that the weekly wages of theatre workers had become two-thirds of the average. The internationally celebrated director Louise Lowe said: “I’m two months away from homelessness. If I fall, I fall on concrete”. 

Journalists need to start reporting the story with the seriousness and accuracy it deserves: a sector on the brink, receiving only 0.1% of GDP in a continent where the average is 0.6%. 

In front of the Oireachtas Committee on Culture, actor Declan Conlon said: “Whenever actors are referred to by radio presenters, they’re referred to as luvvies”. 

Indeed, Newstalk’s radio show The Hard Shoulder showed poor research in inviting Alan Stanford, a director who hasn’t lived in Ireland for six years, to discuss the Abbey complaints. But it did allow host Ivan Yates to affect his voice as if greeting an old peacocking friend: “You haven’t been flitting to this side of the Atlantic? A few nixers?”.

From that you could agree with Conlon’s observation. “The perception of the acting community is like something from England in the 1950s. It’s Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud-nonsense,” he said. 

Elsewhere on Newstalk, old arguments against theatre funding showed their cracks. A question was put to Jo Mangan, chair of the National Campaign for the Arts: “The Abbey got €6.8m last year. Some people would say that money could be used for hospital beds?”. 

“It could also be used to support the independent theatre sector,” said Mangan without apology. 

It’s a good reminder that journalist need to start paying attention to theatre’s straining infrastructure, to stop writing colour pieces and instead work harder. Get a grip.