Wrong Review, Ming, "Equivocation"

Methinks the Critic Doth Give Herself Too Much Credit

I taught Nietszche's “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” to my students when I was a composition instructor last year, and I remember discussing with them the opulence of his language. It's always something to notice, when someone who is not with us to communicate bodily and sonically, and so whose only medium is words, uses them in an obsequious fashion. The question then becomes, why the bells and whistles? Is the writer concious of his excess, in which case, why is he pulling out all the stops? Is he hiding something, or pointing to something about language itself?  And how little do we admire it when someone takes up space with ornamental words for no discernable purpose, but who, by setting pen to paper, arguably presumes we benefit from reading them?

I don't think I need to tell you why critic Hedy Weiss's “‘Equivocation’smart and witty and oh, so timely” reminded me of this conversation with my students.  Exhibit A, the first sentence of the article:

"First, a concise definition of “Equivocation,” which is the title of Bill Cain’s enormously smart, witty, multilayered, political-personal, centuries-crossing, theater-teasing, Shakespeare-embracing play, now in a snap, crackle and pop production at Victory Gardens Theater."

The creative writing workshop snob in me lost any inclination to like or admire this piece of writing when I saw an adverb attached to the first adjective describing the production. “Enormously smart”? (And later in the article, “wildly complex yet impressively accessible” and "beautifully understated"?)

I felt certain that if I'd read this article without having seen the production, I'd have suspected the play likely wasn't enormously smart—all because of this excessive language. Nietszche, Hedy Weiss is not. I don't believe she boasts the self-awareness of her use of excessive language that we like to credit Nietszche with. She goes on in the review to say “it zooms along with all the hip humor of a writers’ meeting for Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.””

Now, did Hedy see a documentary about Stewart's show, or is she going on the Rolling Stone interview with him from 2010 or something?  Is she imagining what a "Daily Show" writers' meeting might be like, or is she trying to naturalize the fact that Shagspeare is played by Marc Grapey, who, as I said to Amy, is someone who looks and acts less like the Bard and more like Jon Lovitz? The one high point of the play, for me, was a moment at which Grapey (unless I'm misremembering) totally goes into overt “New Yorker talking about a play” mode for a laugh, which I genuinely gave. But Weiss's comparison doesn't make clear that the "Daily Show"-writers scenario is one overtly alluded to in the play itself; rather, Weiss seems to be giving herself a bit too much credit for thinking of the comparison, which is a disservice to space I'd rather have seen taken up by a frank discussion of the play's kitschy moments and what such an intentional expression of them onstage might bring to a discussion of Shakespeare in contemporary performance.