Reasons to be sad.

Recently there have been three very passionate threads on this site about three shows. Paris, The Wizard of Oz and Rock Apocalypse. All three shows were clearly performed by people who were very committed to the show and all three got a fair amount of criticism for very different reasons. Now ... the most common defences that members of the companies used to ask for reviews to not be so critical went basically like this, 1/ We're only amateurs 2/ We did our best. 3/ It was for charity. 4/ You don't understand what happened backstage. 5/ We had fun so you should have. and my absolute favourite 6/ The troll who wrote the review had it in for us. Sue him. I've paraphrased a bit here but kept the gist I think. Are these legitimate excuses? Should we make allowances because the casts are only amateur? If so how much allowance? Should we accept that they did their best? What technical shortcomings should we accept? Why do so many people automatically assume that the writer of a bad review has it in for them? I have often said that unless professionals started with amateur theatre they actually don't understnd how difficult the whole process can be for amateur actors and I stand by that. Coping with a day job and only getting 2 to 2 1/2 hours rehearsal at a time seperated by quite long periods can be very hard. I'm not going to answer any of these questions. I will wait and see if anyone else has an opinion.