Otto English’s In Absurdia

A ‘Critical’ Eye

Despite what creative types may claim, even critics are human beings. And though those scrutinisers often get it right, they can sometimes get it wrong.

When Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party premiered at the Lyric in London in 1958, it was largely dismissed by the lofty heavyweights of Fleet Street with just one review, by Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times, recognising the 28-year-old playwright’s talent.

Two years later, the veteran film director Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom was universally panned.

“The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the sewer!” wrote Derek Hall in The Tribune – and though the film was later reappraised as a masterpiece, that came as cold comfort to Powell, who never made a substantial picture again.