Here's a fascinating description of what Sondheim told Jason Robert brown about what you're supposed to say after seeing a friend's show
From wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Robert_Brown
When Brown was 23, he and a friend were invited to see a musical by Stephen Sondheim himself. At the show, they sat in front of the New York Times' Frank Rich. They went to dinner, and after twenty minutes, Sondheim asked them what they thought of the show: they both were silent. Brown described the dinner after that moment as "many extremely awkward silences punctuated by bursts of frantic, desperate conversation about anything other than the slaughtered elephant in the room." Brown called mutual friend Daisy Prince the next day, asking if there might be any way to repair the damage after the dinner. She and her family decided that Brown should call Sondheim. Brown paraphrased what Sondheim said:
Nobody cares what you think. Once a creation has been put into the world, you have only one responsibility to its creator: Be supportive. Support is not about showing how clever you are, how observant of some flaw, how incisive in your criticism. There are other people whose job it is to guide the creation, to make it work, to make it live; either they did their job or they didn't. But that is not your problem. If you come to my show and you see me afterward, say only this: "I loved it". It doesn't matter if that's what you really felt. What I need at that moment is to know that you care enough about me and the work I do to tell me that you loved it, not "in spite of its flaws", not "even though everyone else seems to have a problem with it", but simply, plainly, "I loved it." If you can't say that, don't come backstage, don't find me in the lobby, don't lean over the pit to see me. Just go home, and either write me a nice email or don't. Say all the catty, bitchy things you want to your friend, your neighbor, the Internet. Maybe next week, maybe next year, maybe someday down the line, I'll be ready to hear what you have to say, but at that moment, that face-to-face moment after I have unveiled some part of my soul, however small, to you: that is the most vulnerable moment in any artist's life. I beg you, plead with you to tell me what you really thought, what you actually, honestly, totally believed, then you must tell me "I loved it." That moment must be respected."
Wow! On the one hand, I totally agree with him and certainly know where he's coming from.
On the other hand, if he doesn't want an honest response, he shouldn't ask.
Actor Keenan Wynn had a way of sidestepping this kind of awkward moment.
If he didn't like a picture, and he had to confront the filmmaker or one of the actors (who might be friends) when it had finished, he'd go up to them, smile, give them a light punch on the shoulder and say, "Son of a bitch". It worked every time.
