The Tribune‘s 1975 review of the play that put David Mamet on the map, followed by Jones commenting: “Roger Dettmer was not an especially insightful theater critic, his skills in the music field notwithstanding. This first review of the world premier of ‘American Buffalo’ . . . joins that undistinguished group of opening-night reviews of great plays by critics who completely missed the point . . .”
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Jones doesn’t stint on candor. And because it got my back up when I realized that “150 years of Chicago theater” was 150 years as noticed, for better or worse, by the Chicago Tribune, I appreciated Jones for acknowledging after a Richard Christiansen review that helped put Steppenwolf on the map in 1979 that at the time the Reader “was becoming well known for its extensive theater coverage, often publishing far longer reviews than either of the two dailies. Reader critics made it to shows that Christiansen never saw.” Jones went on—perfunctorily, I’d say: “But the Tribune, with its huge subscription base, had the most powerful voice.” Certainly in Wilmette.
Christiansen was the Tribune‘s chief critic from 1980 until 2002 and one of two whose tenure can fairly be described as an era. The first was Claudia Cassidy; between 1943 and 1971 she wrote 33 of the pieces in Jones’s collection. In one of his commentaries, Jones writes of her hitting her “poisonous stride,” not an unreasonable way to characterize a critic who once, in a review of La Traviata Jones has included, wrote that the lead’s voice suggested the “parrot coached cawing of the crow.” Truth is, though, he feels honored to be, several critics removed, her successor. “I hugely do admire her,” Jones tells me. “I think she’s a brilliant writer.” Now that I’ve read her, so do I. It occurs to me that Bigger Brighter Louder is first and foremost an opportunity for Jones to put much of Cassidy’s finest writing where it has always belonged—between covers. And Jones confirms that if he hadn’t had Cassidy to draw from, there’d have been no book.
The title is spun off from a 1910 column by Percy Hammond, one of the first Tribune critics, Jones tells us, “whom readers actually followed by name.” Hammond claimed to have overheard a director lecturing his cast, which was on its way back to New York after a long run in Chicago. “The things that made your audience laugh this evening would cause a New Yorker to shudder,” said the director. “On Broadway you must be different. You must approach your points subtly, with finesse. You must be deft, quiet, inferential, suave, and artistic, else the engagement will be a failure . . .”
But the Reader has never gone in for anthologies. Which is another story.
