Jeremy Lewis Interview: Becoming a Theatre Reviewer
Title
Jeremy Lewis Interview: Becoming a Theatre Reviewer
Date
9 August 2017
Description
Oral history interview with local journalist and theatre reviewer, Jeremy Lewis.
What's the story?
Having trained and started his journalistic career in the South East, Jeremy Lewis moved to Nottingham in 1981 to work for the Evening Post.
Following the retirement of eminent local critic Emrys Bryson, Jeremy eventually became the regular theatre reviewer for Nottingham from the mid 1990s, attending many opening nights at the Theatre Royal.
In this interview Jeremy discusses how he landed the role of theatre reviewer, including trying to schedule seeing shows at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham Playhouse, the Lace Market Theatre and the Arts Theatre in a single week, as well as avoiding any preconceptions of a show he is going to review.
The Post had a distinguished theatre reviewer, one of the finest in the provincial press in Emrys Bryson, who retired, I would say, in the mid-to-late eighties. His successor, eventually, as theatre critic, left the Post. I, at the time, was the Features Editor of the Evening Post and rather panicked when our theatre writer left. Now because I’d done a bit in the past and I’d enjoyed school plays and I’d done a bit of amateur theatre as well, I decided to take on the role of reviewing theatre until we could find somebody more suitable. And, actually, I enjoyed it a lot and I worked hard at it and I did that from probably mid-nineties through to halfway through the first decade of the 21st century, when I departed to edit a magazine for a while. So really, I had about ten years, I’d say, of reviewing week in, week out. And it was a pretty tough job because Press Nights at the Theatre Royal were invariably Mondays, because the Theatre Royal tends to buy in shows for a week. Nottingham Playhouse would have their Press Nights on Tuesdays and I used to go and review the Lace Market Theatre and sometimes the Arts Theatre as well. Wednesdays was the earliest I could do their shows. So by the time Thursday came round, I was doing a full time job and reviewing in the evening and getting pretty tired.
And I was very lucky in having somebody who stood in for me occasionally and I thought, well actually, he’s better than I am anyway so why don’t we set him on, his name’s Alan Geary and he still reviews, he’s still our chief drama reviewer. If you tend to write in the field anyway, you tend to know what’s coming up and quite often you’ve interviewed director or performers for features to be run in advance of the run here in Nottingham. So it was very rare that I’d be going to see something without some general information about the material, the production itself, and the people appearing in it. That is not necessarily an advantage because quite often it’s better to go and see a show with as few pre-conceptions as possible, It was always a practice of mine, not everyone agrees with it, but I never read a programme or a programme note till after I’ve seen the show. I find that helps make me think my own thoughts, rather than absorb other people’s before I consider the issue.
Following the retirement of eminent local critic Emrys Bryson, Jeremy eventually became the regular theatre reviewer for Nottingham from the mid 1990s, attending many opening nights at the Theatre Royal.
In this interview Jeremy discusses how he landed the role of theatre reviewer, including trying to schedule seeing shows at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham Playhouse, the Lace Market Theatre and the Arts Theatre in a single week, as well as avoiding any preconceptions of a show he is going to review.
The Post had a distinguished theatre reviewer, one of the finest in the provincial press in Emrys Bryson, who retired, I would say, in the mid-to-late eighties. His successor, eventually, as theatre critic, left the Post. I, at the time, was the Features Editor of the Evening Post and rather panicked when our theatre writer left. Now because I’d done a bit in the past and I’d enjoyed school plays and I’d done a bit of amateur theatre as well, I decided to take on the role of reviewing theatre until we could find somebody more suitable. And, actually, I enjoyed it a lot and I worked hard at it and I did that from probably mid-nineties through to halfway through the first decade of the 21st century, when I departed to edit a magazine for a while. So really, I had about ten years, I’d say, of reviewing week in, week out. And it was a pretty tough job because Press Nights at the Theatre Royal were invariably Mondays, because the Theatre Royal tends to buy in shows for a week. Nottingham Playhouse would have their Press Nights on Tuesdays and I used to go and review the Lace Market Theatre and sometimes the Arts Theatre as well. Wednesdays was the earliest I could do their shows. So by the time Thursday came round, I was doing a full time job and reviewing in the evening and getting pretty tired.
And I was very lucky in having somebody who stood in for me occasionally and I thought, well actually, he’s better than I am anyway so why don’t we set him on, his name’s Alan Geary and he still reviews, he’s still our chief drama reviewer. If you tend to write in the field anyway, you tend to know what’s coming up and quite often you’ve interviewed director or performers for features to be run in advance of the run here in Nottingham. So it was very rare that I’d be going to see something without some general information about the material, the production itself, and the people appearing in it. That is not necessarily an advantage because quite often it’s better to go and see a show with as few pre-conceptions as possible, It was always a practice of mine, not everyone agrees with it, but I never read a programme or a programme note till after I’ve seen the show. I find that helps make me think my own thoughts, rather than absorb other people’s before I consider the issue.
Type
Oral interview.
Location of item
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Valerie Rogers & Sally Smith
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
