To the editors:
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Tom Boeker is about as sensitive as a chain saw. No argument from this quarter. In this respect, certainly, he is far from the ideal. If, in addition, he were merely some real estate agent wrapp’d in a reviewer’s hide, if he were stupid or cared nothing about theater, I could understand his revilement at the hands of the Anonymous Directorate. Indeed, I would be baying for his blood myself. The only troublesome fact is, he is none of these things. He is very well informed about theater, has painfully high standards, and is nobody’s fool. And that, quite frankly, is why this anti-Boeker campaign scares me. The implication is that this sort of critic–hell, this sort of audience member–is not what the Chicago Theater Jihad considers to be a true believer, and that anyone who has the temerity to say what he says the way that he says it should be sent to hell.
I’m not denying that Boeker’s language is excessive, and occasionally downright offensive. However, I vehemently disagree that this renders him unfit for his office. I have myself suffered through too many evenings of bad-to-indifferent performances in Chicago, the theatrical Mecca of the Midwest, to blame him for his railings. If he says a show is bad, I believe him. Although his language is extravagant, his judgement is sound, and his “bilious attitude” is its violent and predictable reaction to a steady diet of the shoddy, the shambling, the pretentious, the boring and the fourth-rate. I for one thank him for not pretending that shit doesn’t stink.
