“The Music Critic” will star John Malkovich at Chicago Theatre – Chicago Tribune

While booting up Zoom to talk to actor John Malkovich and classical-music humorist Aleksey Igudesman about “The Music Critic,” a musical-theatrical sendup of scowling, grumbling ink slingers everywhere, I was, in fact, scowling and grumbling.

Through the smoke of a world already on fire, I and other music writers had just been shaken by the news that Bandcamp — whose Daily is among the shrinking, well-paying refuges for quality, authoritative music journalism — had laid off half its staff, joining countless other publications which either laid off staff or folded this year. Our own city, where critics once lined the aisles at openings, now has one full-time staff music critic. Given the current status of the profession, even well-deserved jabs at music critics can’t help but seem angled downward, if not whiffing through clear air.

So, I entered our conversation feeling much like Malkovich’s withering character, an amalgam of every sneer and snipe lobbed at the likes of Beethoven, Brahms and Dvořák. Many of those were compiled, gleefully, in Nicolas Slonimsky’s 1953 “Lexicon of Musical Invective.” (Igudesman admits he leaned on the volume when creating “The Music Critic.”) According to the critical class, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto “stinks to the ear,” Bizet’s “Carmen” renders “melody … obsolete,” and Debussy is just ugly — the man and the music.

One need not look no further than the Tribune’s own ranks for other examples. Former Chicago Symphony music director Georg Solti famously told, and retold, a hideous one-liner by the late Tribune critic Claudia Cassidy: “During the Act 2 ensemble he smiled, when he should have cut his throat instead.” (His misquote has since overruled what Cassidy actually wrote: “In the opera pit Mr. Solti is usually a good man, tho in no sense a great one … He smiled happily thru ensembles so ragged it would have surprised me less to see him cut his throat.”)

The touring show, starring Malkovich and Igudesman, is coming to the Chicago Theatre, backed by a live musical ensemble that includes Igudesman’s comedy partner, pianist Hyung-ki Joo.

When I came out of the gates hot claiming the show “skewers critics,” Malkovich and Igudesman were quick to set me straight. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Igudesman: You say skewers, but it’s very loving. This is a very fundamental part of what we do; this is how we grow. Hopefully, we also have constant criticism from our peers — what works, what doesn’t work. The critic is an outside voice, which can be harsh at times. But that’s the critic’s job. It’s not to write how beautiful and wonderful everything is, unless it is.

Q: John, you’ve done a lot of music theater projects in the classical realm recently. How did you come on board with Aleksey’s concept?

Malkovich: I have a friend who is a costumer in Vienna, and in 2007 she asked me to come and meet a conductor friend of hers (Martin Haselböck) out at the Austrian consulate, which is, strangely enough, in Brentwood, California. He asked me if I would consider doing a piece with his Viennese Baroque orchestra (Orchester Wiener Akademie). He also had an orchestra, Musica Angelica, in Long Beach. Eventually, we settled on a piece about the Austrian journalist, writer, poet, serial killer and a poster boy for rehabilitation Jack Unterweger called “The Infernal Comedy.” So, with our colleague Michael Sturminger, we devised a fake reading of the book that Unterweger never wrote, with a full baroque orchestra and two sopranos representing the women in Unterweger’s life. From that, I’ve done three pieces with them, and two pieces with (violinist) Julian Rachlin, a great friend of Aleksey’s and of mine, when he had his festival in Dubrovnik. And I did (Copland’s) “Lincoln Portrait” with Muti and the Chicago Symphony (in 2018).

There are a couple of others in the pipeline that I may do one of these days. I love the challenge of working with this music that is so beautiful, so powerful and very difficult to coexist with.

Q: So, Julian Rachlin introduced you two?

Igudesman: Correct. Julian and John met on set (in the 2002 TV series “Napoléon”), where Julian had a little role as Paganini. Julian asked John whether he would consider coming to his festival. When you said yes, Julian called me up and said, “Oh my god, John Malkovich may come, but I need your help with ideas.” We met with John in Paris 15 years ago and got on really well. Later, I had the idea to do “The Music Critic,” which John loved.

Besides all of these reviews of the great masters, I felt it was important that the people onstage would also be criticized — that it’s not just outsourcing the criticism. Of course, I found some atrocious things about myself. Then, I found a really horrific review about “The Infernal Comedy” after John did it in Istanbul, and wrote a little sinfonietta around it. (To note: Without giving away too much, the reviewer, among other slights, strongly urges the Turkish government to bar Malkovich from the country.)

Q: In “The Music Critic,” we also hear from composers criticizing their peers. Is there a difference when the criticism comes from someone who, too, is musically accomplished — say, a Tchaikovsky writing about Brahms? (To note: Brahms was, in Tchaikovsky’s estimation, a “giftless bastard.”) Does that make one a better or more “correct” critic?

Igudesman: I don’t think so. If you’re able to write well, and you have a certain passion for music, that makes you a better critic. You can be the most brilliant composer or performer, but if you do not know how to phrase things, you can be an awful critic.

Malkovich: And I think you can be really good at something without having the slightest ability to communicate what makes something good.

Igudesman: It can even be a hindrance, to be honest. If you’re successful, that’s what people love you for; if somebody comes along and does things a different way, it’s not always easy to accept that. Even though Tchaikovsky and Brahms are close in time, they go about things a very different way, compositionally. As an outsider, we can understand that way and this way. We can see the pros and cons of both.

Q: John, I’m sure you remember Claudia Cassidy — I keep thinking of her when I think about this show. She was a career-maker and -breaker in theater and classical music alike, which feels quaint to me now. I don’t know if it’s even possible for a critic to be a Claudia Cassidy anymore, setting aside whether we would want to be. Do you think critics are still powerful?

Malkovich: I don’t think so. I have quite mixed feelings about that, but not about the democratization of opinion. Why not? Because people had opinions anyway.

I remember I once did a play called “A Sorrow Beyond Dreams,” a Peter Handke adaptation which closed (Steppenwolf’s) rival theater, the St. Nicholas Theater, permanently; it was directed by another rival of the theater, my friend Bob Falls. (To note: The Tribune wrote that Malkovich’s performance in that production, “in its remarkable vocalism, is comparable to a complex, demanding, dense work of chamber music.” The St. Nicholas closed due to financial reasons in 1982.) A businessman, who probably had been dragged there by his wife, just got up in the middle of the play and went … (mimes stretching and groaning) “Oh, look, there’s a trap set back there.” Because there was, for some reason, a drum kit just offstage. People have real responses, not just critics, and you’ve got to deal with those.

You see, I remember generations of Chicago critics: from Richard Christiansen (the Tribune critic who reviewed “A Sorrow Beyond Dreams”), Glenna Syse (Sun-Times), Linda Winer (Tribune), Michael VerMeulen, Lenny Kleinfeld, who wrote under the name Bury St. Edmund (both Chicago Reader) … really excellent writers. When I was part of Steppenwolf, we certainly would not have survived without critics. We only survived with critics.

So, I’m not someone with hostility to critics. The review we mentioned in Istanbul became kind of a big scandal, because it was the norm for celebrities to sue critics for whatever they said. But we featured this guy’s review, and people said, “Look at that, that’s fantastic. They don’t sue you — they do this.”

The point really wasn’t revenge. I thought it was a spectacularly hilarious review. I later found out the writer was someone who actually ushered several times to see a play I did on Broadway many years ago, who just didn’t take to this particular piece.

Igudesman: Yes, he was essentially a fan of yours. The passionate review was because of his disappointment. By the way, the last time we performed in Turkey, in 2020, we brought him up on stage at the end. He was so happy — like a kid in a candy store.

Hannah Edgar is, for better or worse, a freelance critic.

“The Music Critic” runs 7:30 p.m. Oct. 26 at the Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State St.; tickets $40-$125 at www.msg.com