In an increasingly diversified media landscape, covering an packed-out industry of existing and emerging talent, theatre criticism is a business which is largely struggling to keep pace with changing times. As all of our media habits change, many critics find themselves singing to the choir or having no impact on their audiences besides a numerical rating at the bottom of the page. But some are bucking this trend, bringing a new variety into criticism of the arts, with none exemplifying this better than the mastermind behind the biggest social media theatre platform – Mickey-Jo Boucher.
Mickey-Jo Boucher, the founder of the MickeyJoTheatre media platforms, is a British content creator, influencer and theatre critic. The man behind the channel which boasts over 75,000 subscribers, and social media platform numbering over 20,000, Boucher is breathing new life into his unique criticism, focusing on video essays and explainer videos to bring his content to viewers worldwide. An accredited theatre critic who covers productions on the West End, Broadway, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and around the world, Boucher also lends himself to interviews of some of the West End’s biggest names, and topical content on the latest news. A University of Surrey graduate and former mathematics teacher, Boucher became a critic in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic and has grown his social platforms ever since.
Given his unusual journey into theatre criticism, I began by asking how Mickey-Jo Boucher came to be in the role he now finds himself. “I think accidentally is the short answer. Theatre is always something that I’ve loved and when I came up with Mickey Jo-Theatre, it was just because I needed a username for Instagram […] At the time I would go and see stuff, I would talk about it briefly on social media and then around about late 2019, 2020, I started making more YouTube videos. And then that kind of led to […] where I am now”.
With an unusual media form for disseminating his work, I followed-up by asking Boucher how his videos are created, particularly compared to a more conventional form of review. Speaking about how he doesn’t “historically take notes when […] seeing something”, he highlighted the importance of being able to be honest and free-flowing when discussing a show, not limited by confines that many other mediums impose: “I will just sit down in front of a camera and talk about it. I don’t script what I’m going to say because I prefer it to feel conversational. I like my reviews to feel somewhere between a thought-out and put-together summary of the show, such as you would read in a written review, but also the kind of conversations people actually have about shows when they leave the theatre […] it’s very freeing”.
But whilst MickeyJoTheatre is thriving, much of the cultural criticism space is failing to reach audiences as extensively as it once did. When asked whether it was due to changing audience attitudes, he instead focused on the media type itself: “Print journalism is suffering and I think traditional theatrical criticism along with it. People still engage with the reviews but I think there is a benefit to meeting people where they are and a lot of dialogue and discourse that happens on social media platforms”.
“Because it’s my face, because it’s conversational, you can infer tone from what I’m saying. That’s harder to do from a written review. There’s something inherently more personal. So I think I’m easier to connect to”. But could it be just a lack of audience merit now being placed on long-form reviews? Boucher doesn’t think so: “People still care about each other’s creative responses to something and finding out if they’re likely to enjoy something, especially with ticket prices going in the direction that they’re going, I think people do still care about reviews”.
One of the most anticipated parts of a review, no matter its format or length, is a star-rating, a system which even Boucher still uses occasionally, despite largely abandoning the metric. He has also previously criticised productions such as Operation Mincemeat, which have, in recent years, focused on the number of five-star reviews they receive, to a greater extent than often seen before. With more to a review than a headline rating, is it time we abandoned stars altogether?
“I do worry a little bit, but especially with marketing, they sort of mean less and less because everything can make a poster look good somehow [but] I have an awful lot of time for the shows that are really clever and put a two-star review behind an image to make it look like it’s a whole column of fives going down […] or even the ones that put a one star on there after a bunch of fives. I think ultimately they are minimally nuanced and minimally comprehensive”.
But context is also important, with star ratings at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival “essential to that particular theatrical ecosystem”, but also with the points that need to be highlighted, as Boucher explained: “Sometimes something really aligns, and I love a star rating. I’m like, yes, this is a two and I want people to know it’s a two, or this is a five and I want people to know it’s a five. Anything in between I find is kind of a bit pointless”.
Mickey-Jo Boucher is also much more than just a critic, with presenter and performer being additional skills he has honed over several years. For those of us who have created theatre ourselves, we know just how much this can alter our own viewpoints, and Boucher is no exception: “Since starting to put together monthly live cabaret shows, […] it does give me a lot more respect and understanding to producers of everything that they are wrangling and contending with”.
“I think it does shift your perspective on certain things. It always offers you that little bit more insight into certain things; you understand a little bit more the work that’s gone into things […] For so many of these shows, for almost everything, these producers really believe in this work and they think they have the next Hamilton. And so it becomes a little bit harder […] you see more of the picture”.
And his support of smaller, independent thespians extends far beyond the West End. With the Edinburgh Fringe on its way, and our own Sheffield University Theatre Company (SUTCo) sending their original play Peace Circle there in a matter of months, Boucher reflected on the important, yet under-appreciated role student theatre and creators play in bringing an event such as Fringe to life: “Student theatre companies and the Edinburgh Fringe is always a big part of my calendar. I wish I could devote more time to plucky new theatre like that the year round. I think it’s very difficult”.
“I play the same game that [everyone] is playing where they need the clicks […] The shows that need reviews for exposure are not the shows that we need, but the shows that we need don’t really need us. So it’s this sort of unspoken understanding of this symbiotic relationship”, which he believes makes reviewing upcoming work at the Fringe not only difficult, but essential to promoting the cultural figures of the future.
Having previously spoken to a number of other key figures in the cultural industries, I was keen to understand what someone with such a unique place in this sector believes the day-to-day issues on the ground really are; do those in authority figures truly know what our artists require? Unsurprisingly, one event from the past few years particularly stuck out to Boucher, which many are still under the burden of: “People are still repaying Covid recovery loans. But I think the ones suffering enduringly from that are regional theatres. I think getting audiences back into regional theatres, there’s a lot of really great programming happening that for whatever reason people aren’t engaging with”.
But the “ongoing conversation” regarding accessibility is becoming an increasing concern, with the two issues intrinsically connected, he suggests: “Society has really shifted post-Covid, and I think there’s something about audiences now. I was at The Mousetrap the other night and there was a fight that broke out, a really loud, disruptive fight broke out in the stalls”, as well as a variety of other etiquette issues, which are becoming increasingly common.
“When I was a teacher post-pandemic, you noticed a shift in classroom management, in how they could control their immediate surroundings […] I think audiences are a little bit similar. I think we’ve become very much used to being in control of our own bubble and it might almost even be a post-traumatic thing about how the world really changed and that was beyond any of our control”.
As we came to the end of our discussion, and with a unique career well underway, I asked Mickey-Jo Boucher what his advice would be for those looking to enter a career in theatre reporting, criticism or similar areas, and how to go about achieving a similar success. Enthused but realistic, he was not afraid to be honest about the life of a reviewer: “I think it would be disingenuous for me to say that it’s really easy or that it’s a thriving industry [but] I obviously am having a certain amount of success doing something particularly rogue and forging my own art, which is something I encourage people to do if you’re inspired to do something differently, to do something that feels more personal to you, even if it’s not the done thing”.
“Whether it’s writing, whether it’s on camera, whether it’s audio, whether it’s a podcast, I think leading with passion and enthusiasm is what people will respond to […] whatever joy I have in talking about theatre, the excitement that I have about it would come across and that’s what people would find familiar and would get them excited about theatre as well. They would feel that kinship through the screen. But also, if you’re not really, really, really passionate about it and really excited about it, it’s going to get fatiguing and you’re not going to be able to sustain whatever it is that you’re doing”.
He also highlighted the importance of “being authentic to yourself”, which he believes is often lacking in mainstream theatre journalism: “We don’t have to fall into the same kind of patterns and saying the same things every time […]There’s five or six sentences that you hear in a bunch of reviews that make me cringe because it’s the kind of thing you say that is just very generic. I would love to know why you connected to it”.
MickeyJoTheatre can be found on YouTube, & on a variety of social media platforms
