RE: “A Pair After Moliere,” by Adam Langer, Chicago Reader, 10/6/95, pp. 42-43
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I would like to recommend that you expand the first section of your venerable weekly newspaper to include a poetry and fiction section, where Adam Langer’s theatrical reviews would be better placed: his incisive improv-style prose and cutting-edge poetry do not deserve to be sullied by association with the plodding, workaday prose of his colleagues. The man has a gift, and, like all gifts, it should be boxed, bound, and set apart for special consideration.
The disrespect shown to the artists reviewed by Mr. Langer when he chooses to shoot off a review in rhyme or in some cutesy “improv” prose is palpable: their work becomes secondary to his writing. It is grossly unfair that any serious theatre artist in this town should have to play second fiddle to the vanity-inspired writings of a dilettante like Langer. There are plenty of forums for experimentation in prose and poetry: the few pages of the Reader dedicated to theatrical review and criticism should not be one of them.
