Isaac Butler's Open Letter to the Times

Well, I'm slowly digesting the delicious feast that my cousin Vance and his girlfriend Laura prepared for our family and deciding to stop my holiday hiatus to point out Mr. Isaac Butler throwing down the gauntlet before the New York Times and specifically Charles Isherwood in his open letter here.

Isaac writes:

"Isherwood is a vacuous and uninteresting writer. He prefers being clever to being incisive, and venerating himself as a writer over looking at the work he has been tasked to see. And his "think pieces" at the Times- one of which is represented by this column- are usually stuff that has less thought behind it than the average post to be found on the Internet on various theatrical blog sites. Isherwood's idea of serious commentary is to criticize Cherry Jones for being miscast, say that the Coast of Utopia is dull, or talk about how great it is not to go to the theatre."

Read the whole thing here.

Do I have a lot to add? No, not really. Isaac's pretty much said it all. Although I'm not particularly worked up over this as some...

(at this late in the game, I'm about as disinterested in the Times as the Times is in me; that's not so much sour grapes as it is realizing that my ability to continue to stage work and having said work get seen, reviewed and discussed has nothing to do with the Newspaper of Record.)

...I've been repeatedly underwhelmed with Mr. Isherwood's assessments, insights and writing abilities. In other words, I've always thought he was (is) a subpar reviewer and a subpar arbiter of taste and art.

Anyway, I figured you should check out Isaac's post.

You may resume the rest of your holiday feasting.

Already checking for leftovers,

James "Lil' Piggy" Comtois