The Stage at 125

The Stage newspaper is 125 years-old and they've put their special supplement online. It includes an article by David Hare on the state of British theatre:

What has undoubtedly deteriorated over the years is the quality of writing about the stage. When my play Teeth 'n' Smiles was revived at the Sheffield Crucible, I looked back at the reviews of the original production and I was struck by what the late Ronald Bryden wrote about it in The Observer. There was an acceptance in his notice that my intentions in writing the play were worthy of discussion. Since the days when Bryden 'discovered' Tom Stoppard via Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on the Edinburgh Fringe, there has not been a single critic whose name can be identified with a single writer in the way that Tynan championed Osborne and Harold Hobson supported Beckett.