Sharon Geoff is not really called Sharon Geoff but, since we’ve long since given up trying to suss out the surnames of anyone at One4Review we’ve decided to denome everyone as an adoptive child of Geoff (just Geoff) the Editor. Come to think of it we should have called Geoff ‘Geoff Geoff’ for consistency, but […]
Full marks to Graeme Morrice for being rambling, irrelevant and slightly offensive in the opening paragraph of his Lucy Beaumont review. “It’s a balmy Thursday night and there’s a mixed crowd packed into one of the smaller Pleasance Courtyard venues. Something’s needed to take our minds off the heat and luckily there’s a slightly ditzy […]
Sadly for David O’Connor, clicking on his name takes you to the Three Weeks theatre critic Dave Fargnoli. It’s almost as if Three Weeks is losing track of its million pickpocket street children. When you’ve read more than a hundred Three Weeks reviews you start to wonder why they even bother recruiting these youngsters anymore. […]
Fringe veterans – particularly antipodeans – probably remember Barrie Morgan – he was the hero of Barrie Morgan’s World of Organs, the Australian sitcom and Fringe show. True, we have no evidence that it’s the same Barrie Morgan. In fact we desperately hope it isn’t. Just imagine being in something that creatively bonkers and then […]
There comes a point in every Ben Venables review that you realise he’s gone off on one and left you scratching your head. His musings reach their most quixotic when he’s trying to describe what people look like: “His slight frame and birdie innocence recall the infant heron gulls that have divebombed Edinburgh gardens these […]
My colleague Mr Rumania has always been rather dismissive of Fest reviewers, saying that they have a policy of under-rating good shows and judging everything from behind a barricade of preconceptions. Even the balanced Mr Kipper calls them “haughty”. I wondered whether it was just that Fest tries to be more honest, and sets realistic […]
Mary! You must stop using so many exclamation marks! I mean, I’m glad that you’re enjoying yourself! But it makes me doubt the veracity of what you say when you’re so damn excitable! So, with the caveat that the time to use an exclamation mark in literature is NEVER, unless you are creating a comic […]
Heather McDaid writes reasonably well. This is faint praise of course, but I’m guessing she is very young – many of her sentences trip over themselves and the reader is often stumped by confusion, bad grammar and ambiguity. Not that these faults are confined to youth, of course. But McDaid’s prose seems to have a […]
Jessica Cropper is a reviewer of the Phil Space school; her short reviews are all padded out with “if-this-is-your-sort-of-thing-you-won’t-be-disappointed”-isms. Basically, if you like yada yada yada, then this is a good choice. It reaches a head with Jessica Fostekew, of whom she says “So if you fancy comedy you can just relax to instead of […]
It’s passing strange that, at the 2013 Fringe, the comedian Sarah Campbell was reviewed in two different publications by reviewers who didn’t go on to review a single other comedy thing that year. What happened? Was there a conspiracy? Did Campbell have them killed? Did Campbell pose as a reviewer to review herself? This could […]
What would The Scotsman’s Fringe coverage be without Kate Copstick’s Fringe Diary? Nowhere much. The Scotsman that The Scotsman is written for is something between a grumpy Presbyterian minister and a right-on civil servant; Copstick’s bawdy reportage is the only thing that keeps the national ink from being a killjoy at its own party. If […]
Rory Morgan doesn’t do a bad job of reviewing. He says what he sees and sums up his impressions in a solid, workmanlike manner. He makes good use of his publication’s word limit, and doesn’t waste too much space going off on vapid tangents. It’s a shame then that Morgan relies so heavily on professional […]
If your show doesn’t get Priyanka Raval into transports of hyperbolic ecstasy then you’re doing something very, very wrong indeed. Of one show she says “The performances were excellent, it was impeccably well structured” and “every line was mind-blowingly brilliant”. Of another, “Despite being a university group, their brilliance equals, if not exceeds that of […]
Rob Hayward’s reviewing style would be perfect if he was reviewing Cloud Atlas, or something by Wim Wenders. Pompous, overblown bits of art that strive to move our very souls could hardly complain at being taken this seriously. But when Hayward picks apart something as fluffy and silly as, say, Gráinne Maguire’s One Hour all […]
Mairi McNicol is careful to wrap her reviewer’s cosh in velvet. “If this sounds like your sort of thing,” she says of something she didn’t like very much, “then prepare to be mesmerised!” another act, who is “overly-anecdotal” and “somewhat alienating” nonetheless “could easily be considered the thinking-person’s Sarah Millican.” Mairi seems to be on […]
Last year, when Broadway Baby allowed writers to construct their own headlines, Lucy Hoggan ran loose with this freedom. “Time to Sit Down” she told a theatrical production called Stand Up, Woman. SLAM! It was worse when she liked something. For a Show called Feta With the Queen, she writes “An awfully Good Show, I […]
Kathleen Sergeant is by no means a bad writer, in fact she’s probably one of the better ones at this particular publication. Everything she writes is cogent and considered. It’s just that it’s a bit boring. Sargeant has a way of describing things she has thoroughly enjoyed in such a way that they seem the […]
It is a characteristic of Fest that a show such as George Ryegold can be described as ‘explosive’ – as “deep, deep parody, tearing apart the faux-charity and propriety of the West, along with himself in the process, to challenge and change us” – and then be given three stars. If Ryegold can effect such […]
Emma Banks is a well-meaning reviewer, but her energy and nervousness sometimes get the better of her. Her problem is that, in trying to explain everything, she explains nothing at all. Of Ryan McDonnell she comments on his “ability to explore universal pitfalls of human experience through the lens of extremely unique and personal anecdotes”. […]