Longtime local reviewer Barbara Rich did not mince words, even in death. “She did not ‘pass,’ she died,” reads her obituary, which did not note how old she was. Rich, who died December 8, wrote for most publications in town, and in the 1990s was a theater critic for C-VILLE Weekly. Her most notable review was of a Live Arts outdoor production of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Visit, performed at the Coal Tower. Because of an allergy to insect bites, Rich was swathed in netting and protective garb to attend the production.
At the time of her death, Rich reviewed books for The Daily Progress, and had no problem calling out a local author’s work as “the worst, the most pretentious, most unliterary, self-infatuating book I’ve ever read.”
She came to Charlottesville from Baltimore in 1966 with her late husband. According to her obituary, although a member of St. Paul’s Memorial Church, she remained a “devout nonbeliever” all her life and encouraged donations in her memory be made to the “Santa Fund, food banks, or any other organization that celebrates the free spirit, and the lack of religious and racial prejudice and intolerance.”