Theatre Cancels Show When Critic Decides To Attend Preview

When the George Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey found out that the New York Times was sending a critic to review a preview performance for its new show, the director decided to cancel the performance. The theater’s staff contacted all 166 ticket holders for the performance to tell them of the cancellation. Says the director: “When it became clear to me that the artistic process was going to be violated and that trust between the press and the theater was going to be violated, I had to put a stop to it. I had no recourse. I could not turn this individual critic away from the performance; that would be discrimination. But I could stop the performance.”