In her review of The Little Wheel Sketch Show, Roberta Thomson complains that it was loud, aggressive and over the top. Later on in her 120-word review she adds that it was loud, over the top and aggressive. And if you’re not convinced, she concludes that it was confusing, mildly offensive and painful on the […]
It’s never easy trying to reviewer a reviewer who has reviewed precisely one comedy show in their entire life. Apart from anything, a person should be allowed to try everything once, should they not? I would not dream of grading Liam Speir on his proclivities with one ladyboy or one hit of methamphetamine, or one […]
“These lads are funny!” That’s what Neil Ballinger could have said about The Noise Next Door. Instead we get “All five of the boys are quick witted and as an audience member, you got the feeling that they could have and most certainly will inject comedy and hilarity into any situation they find themselves in.” […]
“A young lad with a winsome demeanour entered the room and high-fived everyone in the audience. Immediately I liked him.” Ugh, why do people write like this? Were they brought up by mongrels on a bombsite, living in an overturned wheelbarrow without pens or paper? I mean, WHY? It gets worse. “I for one liked […]
Lauren Stephen moved to Edinburgh to work in the Lush soap shop. When the Fringe came around, Three Weeks let her go and review Rob Delaney. She said that he was “completely obsessed with sex” and talked of nothing but “toilet humour”. She gave him two stars and went back to work where, at least, […]
Laura Hutton’s prose style is best described as ‘plodding’. It’s like a fat man walking down some uneven steps in a thick mist with a low-powered torch. Hutton is always looking at what’s directly in front of her, holding onto the handrail of tangible forms: This happened, then this happened (liked that); this happened, wasn’t […]
There is nothing wrong with Milly Reilly’s reviews from a comedian’s point of view. She’s fair, she’s exacting; she goes through everything point by point. You won’t find her going all hatchety on anyone’s ass. There is, however, no real point getting a ticket to anything she reviews as she will have explained everything you […]
When you’re wading through a Margaret Sessa-Hawkins review you feel a great sense of sympathy for Britain’s schoolteachers. These people have to go home and do a load of marking, and to do that marking they need to read a lot of tripe that has been written by children. And children, for the most part, […]
Eleri Boyesen achieves that rare thing in unpaid reviewing: leaving the reviewer-reviewer with little to write about. Her prose is slick, natural and to the point. She explains why things are good or bad with care and a sense of proportion. In short, she makes it look rather easier than it is, and I wonder […]
Dave Fargnoli has been at Three Weeks for four years, which in itself is astonishing. There are three types of reviewer at Three Weeks, and none of them tend to stick around that long. There’s the review-tourist, who usually moves on to other life experiences; the serious reviewer who moves on to a more substantial […]
Joe Abel is a difficult reviewer to quantify. This is because some of his reviews are written by a man with English as a first language and some of them, I am prepared to swear, are translated via the internet from the original Mongolian. Just look at this overboiled word soup that is his review […]