Are reviews and critics necessary in collge theater? Uh, huh, very. Only I'm talking abstractly now--we could do without some reviews and critics.

First, simply, they can save the theatergoer time. In a week stuffed with plays, movies and concerts, you have to make a choice, and a lucid, well-written review combined with general word-of-mouth can give you a good idea whether or not a production is worth checking out.

Second, they provide a forum for artistic debate. This sounds bloated and silly, but an intelligent, experienced critic, even a peer, can sometimes give you a lot of insight into a particular branch of the arts. If more people responded to reviews (or if more reviews were stimulating enough to respond to), some lively debates could be generated.

Third: critics are often the only ones who can give a director or an honest appraisal of his work. Unfortunately--or fortunately--people in our society rarely have the honesty guts to criticize a person, especially a friend, to his face. Who tells you you're giving a bad performace--your friend? As Alceste discovered, not if he wants to remain your friend for very long. (Although I have been very critical of some performances in print, I have never told a friend I thought he was bad.)

Sometimes, when an actor or director loses perspective, a critic is the only person who will suggest he is doing something wrong, and that kind of judgement is vital for the artist to consider if he wants to develop.

But back to Damn Yankees, which only tried to be entertaining and fun. When you look at all those people in shots like these, you think: "Is it really necessary to be critical? Why not just enjoy it?" And then comes the inevitable guilt feelings. I've felt rotten about some things I've written--not because they were wrong or even unjust, but because I've enjoyed writing them.

If a critic tries to write carefully and stylishly, deriving a great deal of pleasure from the finished work, should that pleasure extend to the criticisms themselves? Both the writer and the reader have to separate the process of finding fault from the process of writing well--too much gleeful panning begins to sound suspiciously sadistic.

It's not easy, just as writing a mixed review isn't easy (because you can't chuck everything as patly into a mold of good or bad), but being a critic shouldn't be easy.

By reviewing a play, passing judgement on the creative output of others, a critic implies that his taste and opinion are valuable tools of measure. All critics must earn that power they wield: by the time they put in, the quality of their writing, their committment to good theater, their sensitivity and discretion.

This may be boring, because who cares what a critic has to say anyway since they're all assholes, but as you finish browsing through these photos, which depict the life cycle of House production, you'll see that it is very important, too important to dismiss. A critic who doesn't ask himself after every show whether he has any business being a critic has no business being critic.