ON THE BURGERS, NOT THE BOARDS

posted by James Reel

I’m seeing four plays this week (at this writing: one down, three to go), but nothing opened last week, so I have no theater reviews in the latest Tucson Weekly. I do, however, contribute to the Chow section:

Old joke: A hamburger walks into a bar. The bartender says, "We don't serve food here." The Midtown Bar and Grill does serve food, but it is a little discriminatory--it reserves its best service for the burgers.

The full review is here. Yesterday, a reader e-mailed me and wondered why I waste time reviewing mediocre restaurants when what this city really needs is informed reviews of the Tucson Symphony and Arizona Opera. On the subject of restaurant reviews, I just go where the editor sends me, and not every restaurant is going to be a winner. Regarding performance reviews, by the time a review of a short-run offering like a TSO cycle or an opera production would appear in the Weekly, the performances would have ended days before. Space is extremely tight right now, and I can barely squeeze two stories into the arts section because of declining advertising, so I’m going to focus on covering things that people can still choose to see (or avoid). I did review the TSO in this blog for a couple of years, but I wound up saying the same things about the same programming and the same kinds of performance, so if you can predict what I’m going to write, what’s the point of further writing?

I do know, however, that at least one refugee from the soon-to-shut-down Tucson Citizen may be interested in starting an online review site with fellow unemployed critics; if they can figure out a way to make money at it, we may actually end up with more coverage of classical music than we now have, since the Citizen has no real commitment to it.