Thursday 8 March 2007

A very few inches of theatrical criticism

Ostensibly reviewing Equus, the Evening Standard’s Nicholas de Jongh commented: “Never in modern times has such excitement been stirred by the prospect of viewing a very few inches of adolescent male flesh.”

Judging from his authoritative tone, De Jongh is an expert on the excitement to be derived from adolescent male flesh. All well and good: specialised sites, of which De Jongh is no doubt aware, have already dedicated a fair amount of space to Radcliffe's physique, photoshopped and otherwise. But I fail to see what this expertise has to do with the business in hand: that of reviewing the play.

And I certainly don't see the need to mention the length, or lack of it, of Radcliffe's 'male flesh' (a direct quote from Teleny)? After all, there's no mention in the review of Jenny Agutter's bra cup size, surely also of interest to London theatregoers?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You're in my blog:

http://literaturesotherlanguages.blogspot.com/

Charles Lambert said...

Thank you very much for the citation! It's good to know that that essay is still being read and found useful...