Melodie Bahan, communications director at the Guthrie in Minneapolis—America's flagship regional theater—wants to end theater reviews. Or at least theater reviews that aren't written to her exacting standards:

Reviews in the Twin Cities newspapers don’t accomplish what critics and editors insist they do, which is provide a service to their readers. I would argue that the readers of the two major daily newspapers in this town would be better served by forgoing hastily-written, ill-considered snapshots of an opening night performance and focusing instead on actual journalistic coverage of the arts. I’m not against theater reviews; I’m against theater reviews that are poorly written, thumbs-up-or-down laundry lists of actors and designers that don’t do anything to illuminate the production or give readers a real sense of the experience. Maybe it’s not fair to compare our local critics to Frank Rich, but I think there’s a solution: Stop writing reviews and start writing news.

Bahan's request is a bit disingenuous and twerpy—asking to be excused from critical evaluation while demanding profile stories is better for communications directors than for audiences—but she has a point.

Only running reviews is a one-dimensional, shallow level of engagement with a city's theater scene, though the number-one complaint about The Stranger's theater section is that it doesn't do enough reviewing. (That was a leading gripe in the word-storm that followed the 10 Things article.)

But as newspapers continue to wither in space and staff, editing weekly arts sections becomes an exercise in triage: Run fewer, longer reviews? Run more, shorter reviews? Run news? Run previews? Run the occasional experiment, like this beautiful thing by Tim Sanders we ran as the entire theater section a few years ago? (Go to this page and click on the first link to see the whole page.)

And how are critics reacting to Bahan's sweeping—"hastily-written, ill-considered"—insult?

Dominic Papatola, of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, wrote in an email this afternoon:

Were I in the mood to be combative, I could point to plenty of stories — some of which have hit 1A — and reported columns that I think demonstrate my commitment to arts journalism. And I like to think my reviews reflect the experience and at least some wisdom accumulated in a decade of play-going in the Twin Cities and across the country.

But I guess I'm not in the mood to be combative. I don't pull any punches in writing about the work of others, and so it would be pretty disingenuous of me to take someone to task for offering a frank assessment of my work.

Turnabout is fair play. But as theaters and critics—and unions—drown together, the conversation is starting to sound increasingly vicious.