Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times, 1980-1993 - Hardcover

Love him or hate him, there's no denying the vast influence Frank Rich wielded as chief drama critic for the New York Times. Those he praised usually enjoyed great success; those he damned accused him of conspiring against their productions. Now, here's a volume, almost forbidding in length, that encompasses his work over 14 theater seasons. More than 330 reviews and articles brimming with plays and players, shows and showmen--famous and obscure, enduring and forgotten. Readers are likely to find something that--depending on their vintage--serves as a discovery or a reminder. Do you recall that Mike Nichols and Elaine May once appeared in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (The 1980 production accentuated Edward Albee's dark comedy, but left Rich "hungry for blood.") Or that FOB in the very same year launched the New York career of David Henry Hwang ("an unwieldy, at times spotty work"--one that nonetheless "hits home far more often than it misses"). Jump forward eight years to the same playwright's M. Butterfly and the circle is complete, as Rich lavishes praise upon Hwang's work, calling it one of his favorite new plays. Whatever readers may think of Rich's opinions (and he isn't shy about sharing them), they'll delight in his prose--at once witty and illuminating, sympathetic and sarcastic.

Revealed too in this tome is Rich's admiration and love for several mentors and peers, exemplified in moving tributes to the legendary critics Kenneth Tynan and Walter Kerr. Also poignant are footnotes to several reviews, outlining the real-life tragedies that befell mighty showmen like Gower Champion of 42nd Street. Rich traces the terrible toll AIDS has taken on Broadway, describing an era in which the celebrated and the unsung alike succumbed to the epidemic. Little wonder then, that Tony Kushner's Angels in America, rooted in the age of AIDS, makes such a profound impression on the critic: "I was so overwhelmed by Angels after a matinee in London that I canceled my theatergoing plans for that night; I needed time to think." All this makes Hot Seat more than just a compendium of reviews. It serves as a history and a highly entertaining read rolled into one, a portrait of the theater and, ultimately, of the critic himself. --Roy Wadia

Random House editor Sean Abbott: I know this is going to sound bizarre, but ten years ago Frank Rich was supposed to be my sworn enemy. I worked in the theater in those days, surrounded by people who, shall we say, bore an active dislike of Mr. Rich (they thought he was the Devil), and there was I secretly admiring almost everything he wrote as the chief theater critic for The New York Times. So I kept quiet about how right I'd thought a given day's review had been, how hard it had made me laugh, how deeply it had made me think about the theater and its place in our culture. As you may know, Rich was called the Butcher of Broadway -- it's not a name he deserves. If anything, Rich did more in his fourteen years to keep national attention focused on the theater than any critic a long time before him and certainly since. And his reviews weren't all negative - in fact, relatively few of them were. I think you'll agree when you read HOT SEAT that it's hard to imagine someone who loves the theater more passionately than Frank Rich. That passion fired a demand for the best - and certainly at the exorbitant prices Broadway producers began charging during Rich's tenure, their audiences and his readership could expect the same. The critic consistently delivered, and, often, the critic delivered the entertainment. Of the numbers in one unfortunate musical, Rich wrote: "The dancing doesn't just resemble aerobics, it is aerobics." I was delighted when [Random House editor-in-chief] Ann Godoff asked me to help her edit this collection of the very best of Rich's reviews and essays. (I just hope my old friends don't find out.)