Critic's Choice - TV Tropes
- ️Thu Feb 06 2025
Critic's Choice is a 1960 domestic comedy play in three acts by Ira Levin.
Parker Ballantine, a New York theatre critic, lives in Greenwich Village with his second wife Angela and twelve-year-old son John. Angela is inspired one day to write a play about her Uncle Ben and the colorful occupants of his rooming house at which she stayed for four days. A seasoned producer takes an interest in the play before Angela has completed the second act, and not long after she declares it finished, the dashing young director Dion Kapakos agrees to work with her on rewriting it. Unfortunately, the play turns out to confirm Parker's prejudices about amateur playwrights. Furthermore, John is one of the first to observe that Dion takes a liking to Angela that might not be strictly professional. Parker's mother-in-law Charlotte Orr finds more to be concerned about during the tryout period than taking care of John in Angela's absence. Charlotte worries that Angela will divorce Parker if he carries through with his stated intention to review Angela's play "objectively" on its New York opening night. That possibility interests Parker's first wife and John's mother, actress Ivy London, who arrives at just the right time to exploit the drama.
The original New York production was directed by Otto Preminger and featured Henry Fonda as Parker Ballantine. Warner Bros.' 1963 movie adaptation starred Bob Hope and Lucille Ball.
Tropes appearing in this play:
- All Musicals Are Adaptations: Several fictional musical productions adapted from famous novels are mentioned:
- When Angela tells Parker that S. P. Champlain, a normally reliable producer who also did an apparently woeful musical version of Anthony Adverse, has read her new play and thinks it's wonderful, her husband sarcastically bursts into an "I Am" Song and dance:
"Hello, I'm Anthony Adverse,
And tho' this may be a bad verse,
I'm mighty glad that I'm he-ere!" - Dion, hired to direct Angela's play, was previously involved with Oh, Doctor!, whose success he credits to it being "built on the best foundation of any musical in the past five years. There aren't many novels around that can top Arrowsmith, you know."
- Ivy, arriving fresh off the sets of an excruciating flop, tells Parker he was right about there being "some books that simply cannot be made into musical comedies and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is one of them!"
- When Angela tells Parker that S. P. Champlain, a normally reliable producer who also did an apparently woeful musical version of Anthony Adverse, has read her new play and thinks it's wonderful, her husband sarcastically bursts into an "I Am" Song and dance:
- Amicable Exes: Theatrical critic Parker Ballantine and actress Ivy London are on very friendly terms with each other despite being divorced; she's also the mother of his only child. Ivy arrives at Parker's house just before some simmering tensions between Parker and his current wife Angela come to an ugly head.
- Berate and Switch: Charlotte, trying to save her daughter's marriage to Parker after he reviewed her play, tries and fails to invoke this trope:
Angela: I don't know where I'm going or with whom! But I can't stay here, Mama! I can't! He's a bully and a sadist and an egomaniac and— and—
Charlotte: And he's pompous and self-righteous and he takes his work too seriously and you love him!
Angela: No! I hate him! I never want to see him again, not if I live to be five thousand! - Brutal Honesty: Caustic Critic Parker Ballantine is ultimately unable to restrain himself from giving his wife's new play the panning it "objectively" deserves.
- Caustic Critic: Parker Ballantine prides himself on writing the most devastatingly worded play reviews of any New York drama critic. At his house, with some paid assistance from John (his son by a previous marriage), he keeps a white box full of phrases to be used in glowing reviews and a black box full of phrases to be used in scathing reviews; he makes a habit of taking one handful of slips from each box whenever he goes out to watch a new production. Much of the drama revolves around the question of whether or not he will review the play written by his wife Angela (who at one point accuses him of playing "God and George Jean Nathan rolled into one"), after he makes numerous disparaging remarks at home about it and its director and producer. At first he agrees to her demand that he should refrain from reviewing it, and gives up his opening night tickets. Later he has a dramatic change of heart, empties the black box and stuffs every pocket he has with the hundreds of slips in it before leaving for the Forty-fourth Street Theatre. He then writes the most damning review of the play without using any of his previously written phrases.
- Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Parker, having decided that he's going to review Angela's play anyway, demands that Ivy give him his shoes, "or I will dissect you, and put you in suitcases, and ship you to New Haven and Boston and Philadelphia and Washington." (These cities are where theatrical productions are usually shipped out for tryouts before they open in New York. Ivy's last show didn't make it past Boston.)
- The Grovel: In the final scene, Parker successfully persuades Angela to stay with him rather than run off with Dion with a good bit of groveling plus some admitted "unpleasantness." Over Ivy's objection that he doesn't owe her an apology, he apologizes for everything he did except for reviewing her play, and warns her that he will never again allow her to interfere with his drama reviews.
- Is the Answer to This Question "Yes"?: The play ends a long argument between Parker and his mother-in-law with this:
Parker: I do not believe that Angie slept with Dion, and I do not believe that she'll run off with him if I review her play truthfully.
Charlotte: (A long sigh) All right, we'll change the subject. Let's talk about—geography. Tell me, Parker, how do you know the world is flat? - Loved I Not Honor More: Parker quotes the Trope Namer word for word in the part of The Grovel where he tells Angela that he will never again entertain the possibility of softening his Caustic Criticism to please her.
- My Greatest Failure: Parker resists Charlotte's demand that he give Angela's new play a good review even though it's not a good play and both of them know it, because he's still consumed with guilt over the uncritical reviews that he used to give the plays his first wife appeared in:
"Charlie, I'm a nut, I know I am, but I still have nightmares once in a while about those fake reviews I wrote to keep Ivy happy. And when I say nightmares, Charlie, I mean pajama-soakers! I'm in a plane, a passenger plane, flying over mountains. The stewardess comes around with cocktails, and those six reviews are printed on the little napkins. Suddenly everybody is ugly-drunk and coming at me with their knives and forks. "Listen, folks, look, I told the truth about Helen of Troy!" And then the pilot comes out, played by my high-school English teacher, and he taps me on the shoulder and informs me that we're overweight and one passenger has to jump..."
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Ballantines are a drama critic married to a playwright, like Walter and Jean Kerr were in Real Life. The title of the caustic magazine article Parker is composing, "Don't Write That Play," is similar to that of Walter Kerr's book How Not to Write a Play, a facetious paragraph from which is this play's acknowledged inspiration.
- Present Day: The the time of the play is identified as "last season." The description of the setting notes that the Ballantines' Washington Square home "will probably be torn down any day to make way for an NYU College of Dentistry, and more's the pity."
- Spear Carrier: In the first act, Parker Ballantine caustically ruminates on amateur-written plays "all beginning with the maid answering the telephone and subtly delivering information." The second act begins with the Ballantines' hitherto unseen maid, Essie, doing precisely that for a caller who hangs up before identifying herself (but is later revealed to be Parker's ex-wife Ivy). Essie then walks out the door and thereby leaves the play: as the stage direction notes, "that's the last we see of Essie until the curtain calls."
- Symbolically Broken Object: Lampshaded:
Parker: [Shakes the watch, listens] I broke the spring... [Looks at Ivy, she looks at him.] Symbolism... I cannot stand symbolism! [He hurls the watch across the room.]
Ivy: Parker!
Parker: Don't worry, it's just the old watch my father gave me on his deathbed... [Ivy retrieves the watch, inspects it, puts it someplace.] - You Never Did That for Me: After Parker gives a speech begging Angela to stay with him that moves her to tears, Ivy asks him why he didn't give her that kind of a speech four years ago when he divorced her. "Because you would have stayed, that's why," Charlotte (Angela's mother) answers.