How to write a rave review

Lois Potter, Ned B. Allen Professor of English who teaches Renaissance and Shakespearean literature, has spent several years as a theatre critic in Great Britain.

She started out writing reviews and broadcasting them on the local BBC radio station, where she became a regular feature. "I had only a few minutes on the air, and the reviews had to be entertaining and catchy, so I used a lot of puns and one-liners like, 'The can-can girls could-could' or 'His performance nearly stopped the show, and I wish it had,'" she said.

She also put out theatre broadsheets to give people more information about dramatic productions that were playing in Leicester where she was a lecturer. She caught the attention of the editor of the London Times Literary Supplement and, during the '80s, she was regularly reviewed productions in London, Stratford and elsewhere.

Potter encourages theatre-goers to think about what effects they liked most and how these were achieved, and to try--although it's difficult--to become aware of the distinct contributions of the actors versus those of the director. Rather than being hypercritical, she urges them to try to understand what the actors and director were trying to accomplish before deciding how well they succeeded.

"No one sets out to put on a bad production," she says.