Here at Show-Score, we like to recognize some of our Members that are deemed among the most helpful by their fellow theater fans. One of our Members who has received the Level 5 Helpful badge is Catherine 6062, who manages to pack a lot of insight in her short takes on the productions she has seen.
Catherine is a longtime theatergoer, having attended many of the iconic musicals of the 1960's like “Camelot”, “The King and I”, “Carousel”, “My Fair Lady”, and “Oklahoma” with her family while she was growing up. It was a tradition that Catherine continued with her own family, bringing her children to some of the best-loved Broadway musicals of the 1990's and instilling in them a love of theater.
In recent years, Catherine has increasingly attended off-Broadway productions. However, she soon discovered that like many theatergoers her taste in theater frequently didn't correspond to either reviews of drama critics or popularity at the box office. "We positively disliked some of the shows that had received great reviews and others just did not sing to us," she says. "At the end of the day, theater as art is very subjective, and we found it hard to find what a small group of critics who have an aesthetic different than ours might say about a show as meaningful to us."
That's why after so many years of being a frequent theatergoer Catherine was happy to come across Show-Score. "It has become our go to reference when we are deciding whether to see a particular production," she notes. "Of course we pay attention to writer, director, subject, theater and actors, but it is very unlikely now that we will purchase tickets before looking on Show-Score to see the full panoply of reviews from professional reviewers, as well as those from average theater goers like us who we have identified as having similar taste by reading their reviews."
Catherine points to the recent St. Ann's Warehouse production of “946: The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips” as an example of a show that she liked much better than the general critical consensus (the Critic Score was 70). She explains, "I thought that was a fantastic show. I gave it a 92 – higher than ‘Hadestown’, ‘Great Comet’, ‘Evan Hanson’, ‘Shuffle Along’, and so on."
Catherine's insightful Show-Score reviews are a perfect example of how passionate theatergoers can help influence each other's decisions on which shows they should see. Show-Score members are lucky to have such a helpful influencer shape the viewpoint on productions that might not work for the critics but definitely shouldn't be overlooked.
What show's have you disagreed with the critics on? Let us know in the comments below!