Why is it important?

Another morning, another angry-making article about theatre criticism. Today’s harbinger of doom is Tim Walker, recently axed former theatre critic of the Sunday Telegraph, bemoaning “a bloodbath among my fraternity” (what a telling choice of words there). You can probably save yourself the depressing read and guess the gist of what he’s complaining about.

Loathe as I am to treat Walker’s opinion with the seriousness that a response implies, there’s a grain of something in his article that I worry goes deeper. There’s plenty in it to get the blood simmering: the quoting of an anonymous theatre impresario’s dismissal of “young, spotty” critics, the barely veiled contempt for online writers, the suggestion that the Daily Mail “takes theatre criticism seriously” (ha!). As a young and, yes, often spotty theatre critic (my skin doesn’t seem to have received the memo that I’m 25), it’s hardly surprising that I’m a bit…