The first time I heard of Gina Mallet, the Toronto theatre community was trying to get her fired.
A press conference had been called to demand that something be done about The Toronto Star’s new drama critic, a former Time magazine writer from New York who had recently arrived in town and was taking no prisoners. Amazed that anyone would be so upset with a newspaper critic that they would publicly call for her head, I went along to the press conference.
It wasn’t that Gina was incompetent or inaccurate, that is not what had raised the ire of this group, it was simply the fact that she was tough. Witnessing this spectacle, the like of which had not been seen before and hasn’t happened since, I thought to myself, This is my kind of critic.
(The public whining only ensured a major newspaper like The Star would never do anything but back Gina, which it did.)
In her heyday, Gina Mallet was a throwback to the kind of critic personified in the 1960s by Nathan Cohen at The Star and (to a lesser extent) Ron Evans at The Toronto Telegram, demanding, uncompromising writers, highly articulate, gleefully holding the feet of the arts community to the fire.
Gina was a brilliant drama critic–her perceptions of Shakespeare and what Stratford annually did to the Bard constituted some of the best theatre writing Toronto journalism has ever produced.
In life, Gina was as tough and uncompromising as she was in print. She did not suffer fools or editors, particularly, as they often did, when the fools and the editors came packaged together. Then Gina’s rages became a breath-taking performance art played out in The Star’s newsroom, a shock and awe campaign wondrous to behold–and not a little frightening, particularly if you happened to be the hapless editor on the receiving end.
Years after that press conference, I finally met Gina when I joined The Star to write first about television and then film. We became friends, joined in part by our mutual distrust of the editorial powers trying to run our lives. Those of us who worked in entertainment back then were an unruly but loving family, held together by the outside forces who daily conspired–as far as we were concerned–to cut our copy, reduce our editorial space, and generally make our lives as miserable as possible.
Small and heavyset, russet curls knit tightly to that patrician head, possessed of a mid-Atlantic drawl that would have been at home in a Noel Coward play, she was a fearsome adversary with enemies galore. There was no one she wouldn’t take on from newspaper editors to restaurant owners to landlords.
Whatever Gina was, whatever you thought of her, she was an original, and when she had an opinion on something–and she had an opinion on everything–God help you if you disagreed.
Once we auditioned together for a CBC radio show–critics sitting around discussing the popular culture of the day. Gina was so ruthlessly aggressive with her views that she sent one of the more milquetoast critics on the panel scrambling for the hills and made the CBC rethink any idea it had about allowing opinionated rabble such as ourselves onto the public airwaves.
Those of us who knew Gina also knew a softer, funnier, most generous friend. When my marriage fell apart, I soon found myself part of her regular Saturday night dinner parties, and there a calmer, sweeter Gina with a glass or two of good wine inside her, presided over delicious meals she prepared in her tiny kitchen. She had a lovely Cheshire cat smile, and when she was happy about something, she flashed that smile and nearly purred with delight.
She was a superb cook, even more knowledgeable and articulate about food than she was about theatre–a knowledge she put to good use in later years as the restaurant critic for The Globe and Mail and The National Post.
She even wrote an award-winning book, a delightful combination of memoir and cri de coeur for the fate of good food titled Last Chance to Eat. In the book, I encountered a Gina I had not known before, the child of well-to-do British parents who grew up on a farm during the Second World War, and whose family later occupied a London apartment over Harrods department store.
There was an enigmatic quality about Gina. You knew her but didn’t really know her. There were parts of herself that she kept to herself. I saw a fair amount of her in the past few years, usually at lunch along with Jim Bawden, The Star’s former television critic. We would join Gina as she invaded various eateries in pursuit of her next restaurant column.
These were delightful lunches, the three of us yet again picking over the long-ago sins of The Star editors we’d had to suffer through, trading the newspaper gossip of the day, listening quietly to Gina’s delightfully barbed political views–slightly, shall we say, to the right of the center.
I knew she had previously battled cancer, and I knew she had fallen on hard times after leaving The Star and more recently when she lost her food column in The National Post. The lunches dwindled, I think mostly because she just couldn’t afford them any longer.
What I didn’t realize until it was too late, was that Gina’s cancer had returned, and this time it wasn’t going away. She died yesterday, and I sit here today writing this in tears, remembering someone who gave her heart and soul to journalism, who pursued the written word with total commitment and endless passion, and yet got so little back. She deserved better.
But then she gave so much to those of us fortunate enough to be her friend. As sad I am today, I can’t help but smile knowing she is off somewhere making life difficult for an editor.
Shock and awe, Gina. Shock and awe. Go to it, sweetheart…
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Author of "The Sanibel Sunset Detective" and "The Strange." Ron spends part of the year on Sanibel Island, Florida, where he writes detective novels featuring private eye Tree Callister. When he is not in Florida, he resides outside Toronto, Ontario with his wife, Kathy.
Ron Base Writes 
Nathan Cohen was respected. He knew the Toronto Theatre community and supported it. He followed what various groups and theaters were doing creatively, where they were going. He had a finger on the pulse of Toronto Theatre. When needed he was encouraging. If a theatre strayed and committed theatre crimes, he was the first to criticize. But even when his criticism was harsh he Do so n a way which made you think, ‘what could we have done different?’ Or ‘how do I deal with this and make it better?’ In other words he was constructive and a friend to the audience as well. And he had perspective. He made it his job.
Gina Mallet was no Nathan Cohen! She was the opposite. She just barged into the theatre scene not knowing the lay of the land and just flatly passed judgements. She came off as a theatre snob. The theatre community knew little of her ‘credentials’ or who she was. She didn’t take the time to meet the theatre community or to discover what it was about, where it was headed, where it came from. She had no idea of the history. In short she had no perspective on what was shaping up to be a renaissance in Canadian theatre in Toronto. One which would spawn the biggest boom in new theatre startups across the country! Theatre that was Indigenous, original and uniquely Canadian. It was a vibrant time. People were taking risks, new groups were starting up. But to Gina Mallet, Theatre Critic from big bad New York, this all seemed somehow far from her idea of what theatre should be. She knew better and acted like a one person crusade to set us in the ‘righteous’ path! There was precious little constructive critique only what was wrong with this play or theatre or actor. She made comparisons to classic references which had little to do with what was being done. Bottom line, she was destructive.
Finally the theatre community got fed up after a short but intense time with Gina at the helm.
She wasn’t the only one who could use media. The theatre community called a press conference and spoke out their concerns.
I was an actor and a director at the time with Theatre Passé Muraille. A theatre which produced over 27 original plays in 1974! That was more than Stratford or any regional theatre in Canada. I witnessed it all. Gina’s critiques and the protests. She was a gunslinger who shot first and asked questions later, not some brave critic who bucked the status quo. On the contrary her ideal was the British system of theatre as in Stratford. Her standards had little to do with what was happening in the Toronto theatre scene. She was way off base. Just as you are Ron Base.
Yer fulla CRAP, Kelman! She was as hard on Stratford (calling Robin Philips’ tedious interior decorating “intellectually inconsistent, of course”) as she was on Leon Major’s tepid, plodding, Rosedale-friendly “Mother Courage” as she was on “Canadian collective theatre” (datsa yoo) as she was on Toronto’s pretentious, precious, shitty London-imitating, Paris-impersonating, New York-imitating, little restaurants.
Her ideal was not any “British system” of theatre (have you worked in it? I have); it was GOOD theatre.
Only insecure twats would organise a press conference to denounce a critic.
What really annoys me, Paul (and I must dsclose we went to theatre school together, in the 60s) is your premise: that a critic should understand the cultural context in which theatre is produced, before opining on it. Surely, then, you expet the same of an audience member. Absurd.
Theatre affects, or it does not. When Mallet was at The Star, most of it did not. That was our fault, not hers.
What a marvellous tribute to Gina this is Ron. It is so poignant about a woman who I was fortunate to interview when her book was published and subsequently got to know better as a tremendous fan of her restaurant critiques. In fact, I subscribed to the Post for her take on eateries and Rex Murphy’s wonderful rants each weekend. I will miss Gina so much along with her many admirers. The detractors are so anal. Judy
Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course and I’m 110% for freedom of the press and equally against censorship of any kind. I am also familiar as a published writer that writers and journalists respect each other as they know and appreciate how hard it is to be in this profession and have even a modicum of success. Not to forget the toll it takes on your time and lifestyle. I certainly don’t take any of that for granted. So it doesn’t escape notice that the approach to Ms. Mallet’s journalism is in her favor by other journalists as well as a bit defensive. But there were legitimate reasons for the Toronto Theatre community to protest her being Toronto’s Theatre Critic at the Toronto Star which also reaches a national audience. I outlined those reasons from an ‘I was there’ vantage point. My comments were accurate as to how the vast majority of the Theatre community actually felt and what they had to deal with in her role as Theatre Critic. Far from “anal”, they were accurate I in describing the situation and explaining their side of the story. Perhaps she was a wonderful Food Critic in her later career and she found her niche. But Theatre Criticism of the Toronto Theatre scene at that time was definitely not. The fact that she was unable to sustain a career as a Theatre Critic, I think speaks for itself. That doesn’t mean her memory or entire life should be marred by this event but she did actual damage to many people in the Theatre profession back then. You see Theatre people know how incredibly difficult it is to even make a living let alone be free enough to create meaningful theatre or even succeed for that matter. They also have a long memory.
Right on, Ms. Creighton! Thanks for that. I usually agreed with her theatre reviews, and enjoyed her witty restaurant critiques.