You may be forgiven for mistaking the next meeting of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle for a maternity ward; this week brought a slew of contenders tripping over their Kleenex boxes for a shot at the Most Lachrymose Reviewer honor. Yesterday, Ben Brantley in a think-piece for the New York Times admitted, “When the big party moment came around in The Suit, I still had tear tracks on my face from earlier scenes” — maybe his essay could be more accurately described as a “feel-piece.” Also yesterday, the New Yorker‘s Hilton Als described himself as overcome with tears at a press performance of Good Person of Szechwan: “We cry with Shen Tei because Taylor Mac will not let her faith go,” he says. Come, come, Mr. Als — I saw that show too. Stiff upper lip and all that; it’s a very good, imperfect production of a minor Brecht play, not the Resurrection of Our Lord. And today, reviewing a Florida production of A Raisin in the Sun, Terry Teachout writes, “If you’d been at last Saturday’s matinee, you would also have heard weeping throughout the auditorium during the final scene of this glorious revival. Never have tears been so honestly earned.” I fear that Mr. Teachout may have disqualified himself here by reporting on the audience’s tears rather than his own.

All this, just in the first week of February — if this keeps up, it’ll be a long, wet year on the Rialto. Audiences are herewith advised to be on their guard: they don’t want to slip in the pool of tears collecting next to the aisle seat. Apparently British critics are made of sterner stuff: when the Guardian‘s Lyn Gardner goes to the theatre these days, she’s usually just bored.

A few other notes from around the Web this week:

HowlRound, the Web site for Emerson’s Center for the Theatre Commons, is accepting applications for critics who will emphasize “positive inquiry and rigorous thinking” in their writing. Thomas Garvey is skeptical.

The new issue of American Theatre magazine features Christopher Wallenberg’s extensive profile of playwright Christopher Shinn as Shinn’s new play Teddy Ferrara opens at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.

After a lengthy hiatus, theatre blogging veteran Garrett Eisler returns to The Playgoer. Mr. Eisler says that, at least for now, he will be posting reviews every week or so; he begins with this evaluation of Broadway’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. All I can suggest is that he lay in a generous supply of Puffs.

Mine, in the December 2012 issue of TCG’s American Theatre magazine, that is, where I review two new books about the British playwright Harold Pinter. It is not online, I am afraid (pony up for a subscription, why don’t you?), but you will find on the Web Alexis Soloski’s extended interview with Public Theater head honcho Oskar Eustis, and Robert Hedley and Harriet Powers’ comparison of the new play environments in the US and in Great Britain. I’m proud and delighted to make my American Theatre bow.

A few blogospheric notes to round out the summer:

Guardian critic Lyn Gardner is taking over the reins of that newspaper’s theatre blog as her “permanent home,” Andrew Dickson wrote on 6 August. Many writers, including myself, have contributed to the blog since its inception four years ago, and it is heartening to see the Guardian recognize it as an important venue for criticism by assigning one of its most important critics as its primary representative. Others will continue to contribute to it, but the focus has shifted: “[The] idea is that Lyn has more freedom to own the blog, to experiment with what the space can be (you’ll probably see shorter, more reactive posts and open threads), to get artists more involved, and to engage readers — yep, that’s you — in lots of different ways. We’re excited to see what happens. We hope it’ll keep evolving,” Dickson notes. I hope so too. In the meantime, congratulations to her as she assumes her new post.

Congratulations also to Feminist Spectator writer and Nathan-award winner Jill Dolan. Palgrave Macmillan is preparing The Feminist Spectator in Action:  Feminist Criticism for Stage and Screen, an anthology of Dolan’s blog posts, as well as a selection of new material, for publication in Spring 2013 — again, formal recognition of the maturity of the blogosphere as a place for long-form discussion of issues dramatic and theatrical. (After all, nobody’s exactly collecting Twitter or Facebook posts about theatre for print publication.) In the meantime, a new edition of her 1988 book The Feminist Spectator as Critic will be issued by the University of Michigan Press later this year.

Howard Sherman has been running some numbers, and his recent post “The Broadway Scorecard: Two Decades of Drama” provides a few surprising insights into the health of the non-musical play on Broadway over the past twenty years. The Great White Way has come in for its share of blame for its purported marginalization of new American plays, but Sherman’s study offers some evidence that this is not entirely true. He carefully parses the roles of both commercial and non-commercial producers of these plays on Broadway and concludes, “[So] long as Broadway remains a beacon for tourists, for theatre buffs and for the mainstream media, so long as it holds a fabled spot in the national and international imagination, plays on Broadway remain important, even if they are marginalized or unrepresentative. With all of the challenges that face producers, commercial or not-for-profit, who wish to mount plays, the public perception of American drama is still weighted towards Broadway, even if its mix of new plays and classics is but the tip of the iceberg, financially and creatively.”

Finally, Emily Rapp, who has been writing about her experience with her son Ronan at  Little Seal as well as in the New York Times and Slate, has announced that her book about Ronan, The Still Point of the Turning World, to be published by Penguin next March, is now available for pre-order at amazon.com. A few earlier posts about this are here and here. I highly recommend both her blog and the new book.