Tony Makos approaches reviewing with the right attitude. He opines that Nadia Kamil’s first solo hour “is all over the shop, and barely hangs together in places”, but nonetheless grants her four stars because “it’s clear she’s having nothing less than an amazing time”. Makos puts his analytical skills behind his gut reaction in most […]
The thing I like about Lizzie Milton’s reviews is that she doesn’t try to write like a reviewer, or rather, like what the average Three Weeks critic THINKS a reviewer might write like. Milton writes the way your friend might talk when coming out of a show. Well, depending on what your friends are like. […]
Is there a name more deliciously Joyceian than Maeve Scullion? I can imagine Maeve Scullion being one of the ladies Leopold Bloom eyes up from behind his bushes in Ulysses. You’d expect no nonsense from Maeve Scullion. No nonsense, and maybe some soup. I imagine her going down ‘the comedy’ with a big ladle, just […]
Lauren Humphreys is just very, very good at the reviewing lark. The only things missing from her output are, frankly, more comedy reviews. Why is Humphreys putting so much time and effort into cabaret and children’s shows and tuppeny-ha’penny theatre when she could, if she wanted to, shine her light onto comedy? Her description of […]
Melissa Lawford uses the words ‘moreover’ and ultimately’ far too much in her reviews, so I’m going to overuse them in her reviewer review, just so that (if she should chance to read it) she can see how annoying it becomes. Ultimately, Lawford is not a bad reviewer. Her sentences are crisp, considered and easy […]
Alanta Colley is photographed for Broadway Baby pretending to shoot a pigeon that is hovering just above her head. Nothing – animal, vegetable or mineral – will prevent her from chucking her big bucket of stars over everything she sees. She really does seem to like almost everything. There are victims, however. Metaphors are abducted […]
Bruce Dessau is a strange sort of fish. Comedians of every stripe (that’s woolly liberal to militantly liberal, if we’re honest) want to court his favour and his opinions, even though everything he is and everything he can bestow was sprung from the wellspring of Lord Dacre’s bumhole. I used to wonder why this didn’t […]
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 […]
Frankie Goodway seems to be given a lot of work by Broadway Baby; it’s good to see that they recognise a good writer when they see one. Many reviewers try to evoke broader themes from their wry generalisations, and almost all of them fail abysmally. But Goodway shows how it’s done: “The show concludes with […]
Reviewers who review just one comedy thing and then scarper back to the high-art trenches of theatre / spoken word / cabaret / exhibition / anal flute-playing are a particular bête noir of our editor, Mister Kipper, who practically insists that we deduct a swine point from them just for being a fly-by-night chancer. (No […]
Reviewing the Best of Edinburgh Showcase Show, Bagnall begins: “Much like Arthur’s Seat is the bedrock of Edinburgh, comedy is the bedrock of the Edinburgh Fringe”. Well, Arthur’s Seat is a volcanic outcrop; one that is largely devoid of topsoil and has been subject to a great deal of erosion and vertical fracture. Bedrock is […]
Oh, Agnes Chambre. Agnes Charm-breh. AGNES… Chambre. Did any name evermore deliciously combine the apparent and the other? The matriarch and the madame? The kitchen and the bedroom? The no-nonsense and the funny business? If I could be reincarnated, as a woman, I would definitely call myself Agnes Chambre. Or even Agnes Chamber. A chamber […]
Brian Donaldson is Comedy editor at The List and reporter at large for The Scotsman. Apart from his Fringe duties he has written for The Times, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Saga, Sunday Herald, The Herald, Scotland On Sunday, the London Evening Standard and The Record. As you would expect from such a time-served hack, […]