With so many Fest reviewers wanting to hunt down Fringe comedians, slaughter them in cold blood and wear their shrunken heads and genitals as voodoo fetishes, it’s perhaps refreshing to find one who just wants to inspect their private parts in a scientific way, pat their heads and release them back into the wild. By […]
You can tell that Alan Morrison writes for a newspaper: thanks to his journalistic training, the presence of a sub-editor and (quite possibly) the need to accommodate an advert for the Taj Mahal curry house just before his page goes off-stone, Morrison’s reviews are cut to the absolute quick. Not a word is wasted and, I’m […]
There’s not much wrong with Joe Spurgeon. So I’ll start with as much wrong as I can find. I disagree with his too-frequent two-star allocations. But then, I would. And I wish he would stop mithering on about shows that don’t have a message or a denouement. It’s almost funny when he complains that Chris […]
Joanna Alpern writes long, carefully-considered reviews, and always gives the performer – famous or obscure – sufficient due. You might say that she is from the Julian Hall school of comedy reviewing, which is no bad thing. If anything, Alpern goes into too much detail. But it’s forgivable in her case as she tries not […]
Victoria Beardwood is very good. In fact, so good is she that I scoured every single one of her reviews looking for something to moan about and I pretty much came up empty. They’re concise, enthusiastic, witty without being condescending, and they fit perfectly into the Three Weeks slug format. If there’s one little quibble […]
“Serene, easy-going… delightful in a mellow, ticklish way… Delicate and exceptionally dry, occasionally reaching a curious threshold somewhere between amusement and bemusement”. Is this Jilly Goolden describing a Chilean merlot? No, it’s Andrew Pollard giving a critique of Norman Lovett. You can’t accuse Pollard of being insufficiently descriptive. Not only does he paint a picture […]
Jay Richardson writes for everyone who matters at the Fringe, and others that don’t particularly. The two things that define him are his constant recourse to reason and his deft turn of phrase. He employs a great economy with words, so that three paragraphs give as accurate a picture of a performance as four or […]
In his accompanying photograph James Dolton looks about 11, but don’t let this fool you. He writes with all the power and precision of someone three years older. In Broadway Baby terms, this makes Dolton an old man of letters, a veritable Venerable Bede. Of all the publications to take a butchers at Baconface (ie […]
Bernard O’Leary is the main man at the Skinny, and it’s interesting to see how his approach differs from that of the other review grandees. For example, while Chortlemeister Steve Bennett was furious with Ellis and Rose’s Jimmy Savile: The Punch and Judy Show – pretty much accusing the hapless duo of wasting his precious […]
Chris Tapley wrote five comedy reviews for The Skinny in 2013, all of them well-constructed, well-argued and grammatically tight. You have to wonder if The Skinny can’t squeeze a bit more comedy juice out of its more talented reviewers. Tapley isn’t one of those jack of all trades who is constantly being distracted by theatre […]
Tom Bateman’s reviews have a measured, precise quality pitched somewhere between politician and cricket commentator. But if his praise is always qualified his criticisms are even more so. He muses over one show he did not “fully connect with”, saying that it “may be that the show lacks ambition”. He isn’t sure. He’s wondering. Some […]