Wall Street Journal hire is a win for media theatre coverage

Five years after his departure from the New York Times, theatre critic Charles Isherwood vaulted back into wide circulation last week with his debut as the new theatre critic for the Wall Street Journal.

Isherwood succeeds Terry Teachout, who died unexpectedly in mid-January after nearly two decades in the position. Isherwood has been writing for the online Broadway News since 2017.

Unlike most news outlets, where arts criticism exists within an arts department, the Murdoch-owned Journal’s practice is rather unique: its critics are engaged by the paper’s editorial page. Teachout explained this as all of the paper’s opinions coming under the same umbrella, rather than being parcelled among separate departments by topic.

The editorial division of the Journal is strongly conservative in its political bent. Oddly enough, that’s precisely why the engagement of a new theatre critic is a positive sign.

In an era where the arts are frequently, and speciously, held up as examples of liberal propaganda, it would not have been altogether surprising if the Journal decided to wholly dismiss theatre criticism. Instead, even while its arts coverage and criticism is only a small portion of its overall output, theatre will still have a place amid the chronicling of the world’s corporate life, an affirmation of theatre’s value.

The retention of this foothold at the Journal is significant when looking at how news is disseminated these days. According to Press Gazette, the Wall Street Journal is the number one print newspaper in the US, with an average distribution of 730,440 copies in mid-2021, almost twice that of its closest competitor, the New York Times. While the Journal is 18th among online news sites, at 55 million visits in January (the Times is third and the Washington Post fourth), that list is shared with media news sites that don’t have a print media arm.

Many of the outlets on that latter list – including CNN and MSN – don’t have dedicated arts departments, let alone regular critics. While it’s not possible for outsiders to know how many page views arts reportage or criticism receive from the tens of millions of monthly clicks, it’s reasonable to assume that, except for when celebrities are involved, the traffic is on the lower side.

The Journal’s engagement of Isherwood is a bulkhead against the decline in mainstream, mass-market arts journalism

But the Journal’s engagement of Isherwood is a bulkhead against the precipitous decline in mainstream, mass-market arts journalism by professionals paid for their work. Whatever the views about the outlet’s political leanings or on Isherwood and his aesthetic judgments, the message here, which may resonate with at least a few news honchos, is that there’s value in writing about the arts. This contrasts with what has happened at many major newspapers, such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the major paper in the sixth largest city in the country, which hasn’t had a staff theatre critic for a decade.

It’s too soon to know where Isherwood’s new beat will take him, but Teachout was also afforded one of the rarest opportunities for a US theatre critic these days: a travel budget. As befits a national (and even international) news source, Teachout wasn’t restricted to seeing and writing about theatre only in the greater New York area and he ranged even farther afield than most of his peers, such as Chris Jones at the Chicago Tribune, Charles McNulty at the Los Angeles Times and Peter Marks at the Washington Post, who largely shuttle between their outlets’ main market and New York. During his tenure at the New York Times, Isherwood certainly paid attention to regional work so hopefully he will follow that path again.

For those who advocate for a diverse body of theatre critics to better represent the wide variety of artists and audiences, the hiring of a critic from the long-established pool of voices may not seem a salutary event. But especially in light of the philosophical perspective of those making the hiring decisions, an overtly progressive choice was unlikely. Fortunately, Isherwood’s tastes and interests are wide-ranging, as would be evident to anyone who read his work at the Times – and Variety before that – would know.

The bottom line is that the loss of Terry Teachout, while profoundly sad for readers and for those of us who knew him, has not yielded another loss in major media theatre coverage. In light of a seemingly inexorable decline, the retention of a platform is a win.

This week in US theatre

Originally scheduled to close in June 2020, when it was losing its theatre to The Music Man, the musical Beetlejuice instead shut down along with all other shows as the pandemic hit. But in an afterlife befitting its title character, Beetlejuice returns to Broadway tonight at the Marquis Theatre, with much of its original principal cast intact.

The intellectual relationship between America’s first two female Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is at the heart of new musical Justice, which begins its run at Arizona Theatre Company in Tucson tomorrow night. Melissa Crespo directs the world premiere, which has a book by Lauren Gunderson, music by Bree Lowdermilk and lyrics by Kait Kerrigan.

"Agonising over her insignificance in the universe," Debra Messing starts as a teen and ages some nine decades during the course of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles, making its New York debut on Broadway via Roundabout Theatre Company on Sunday. Vivienne Benesch, artistic director of PlayMakers Rep in North Carolina, directs.

The children’s classic The Little Prince has been adapted many times on film and as a 1982 Broadway musical with Michael York that played 20 preview performances and never officially opened. On Monday, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s fantasy lands on Broadway again in a version that has previously played  in Paris, Sydney and Dubai. It is directed and choreographed by Anne Tournié and adapted and co-directed by Chris Mouron.
A close-knit group of gay men take a post-pandemic trip together to Palm Springs in the world premiere of JC Lee’s To My Girls, opening Tuesday at Second Stage’s Off-Broadway home. Stephen Brackett directs.

A quarter of a century after it premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in California, Barry Manilow’s musical Harmony, with a book by Bruce Sussman, finally makes it to New York, opening Wednesday at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene in lower Manhattan. The show tells the true story of the popular Comedian Harmonists, a singing act torn apart by the Nazi regime. Warren Carlyle directs and choreographs.

The low-level crooks of David Mamet’s American Buffalo case the Broadway joint for the fourth time, in a new production opening this Thursday overseen by Atlantic Theater Company artistic director Neil Pepe. The cast is comprised of Laurence Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss.

Jamie Lloyd’s production of Cyrano de Bergerac, in the new version of the Edmond Rostand classic by Martin Crimp, opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Thursday. It plays a limited run through May 22.