EVERYTHING MARKED WITH: Becky Walker’s Panda


Eve Livingston August 7th, 2017 by

There’s no affectation to Eve Livingston’s reviews; they’re straight as an arrow hewn out at the Rolls Royce machineworks. The quality isn’t far off either. If Livingston has one fault it’s perhaps her conviction that she has to comment on every bit of the show; not quite blow by blow but certainly every major movement. […]


Craig Angus August 21st, 2015 by

Craig Angus is a good example of how The Skinny’s new approach to reviews may not be working. Reviewers now have to see a whole bunch of shows and then, when they’re ready to share their accumulated wealth of opinion, they have to sew them all together with a causal thread. So The Skinny is not […]


Jon Stapley August 20th, 2015 by

There are some toys at FringePig who seem to think that that theatre-hags and cabaret-whores and music-prostitutes and childrens’-show…erm… whatever class of degenerate they are… should stick to hanging around in their own fleshpots. I’ve never really agreed, and so it is my pleasure to present the amazing, multi-faceted, quadruple-headed Jon Stapley. A good few […]


Tom Bragg August 14th, 2014 by

Tom Bragg, the magazine’s podcast editor, is not your usual Three Weeks hack, by which I mean he has very apparent writing skills and applies them skilfully to the publication’s puff format. I think I speak for my colleagues when I say that, when reviewing reviewers, it’s usual for us to glance at the stars […]


Arianna Reiche August 10th, 2014 by

Last year, Arianna Reiche did a typically Fest thing: slating Al Lubel when almost everyone else thought he was quite magnificent. The critic two-starred her fellow American for being too confessional about his drawn-out toilet training. Yes, an American told another American that he was sharing too much. Weird shit happens at the Fringe. She […]


Hamish Clayton August 10th, 2014 by

There’s something about Hamish Clayton that’s a little bit creepy. He puts you in mind of Prince Joffrey, or Caligula as played by Malcolm McDowell, so quickly do his apparent affections and sympathies turn to menace. “It must be remembered that this is a free show and should be judged accordingly. It is certainly better […]


Veronica Lee July 25th, 2014 by

Most of The Arts Desk’s Fringe comedy reviews were written by Veronica Lee in 2013, and it’s fair to say that she is a very thorough reviewer. Clearly this reviewer sees comedy AS art, and despite its lack of Arts Council funding I wouldn’t like to dissuade her. It explains her appraisal – practically a […]


RM Ballantyne July 21st, 2014 by

We assume that this name is ersatz, since we are very clever here at Fringepig and I know that RM Ballantyne was a Scottish children’s author in Victorian times, who wrote such ripping yarns as The Coral Island, forerunner to the altogether more dystopian Lord of the Flies. Of course, I could be wrong. It […]


Pete Kelly July 21st, 2014 by

Of all the reviewers to get cross with Carl Hutchinson for having a show about nothing much, Pete Kelly gets the crossest. “There should be a Fringe award for flimsiest premise in a stand-up show,” he growls. “[His show] conforms to the current orthodoxy that an hour of stand-up must conclude with a trite moral […]


Paul Fleckney July 21st, 2014 by

Paul Fleckney is the main man at London Is Funny, so you would hope his reviewing skills are strong. Well, they’re not at all bad: he takes his time, breaks down each aspect of what he sees and peppers the whole thing with some nice little phrases: “Partridge-esque overtures” and “speech patterns traight from the […]


Mary Woodward July 21st, 2014 by

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 […]


Martin Walker July 21st, 2014 by

We hope that Martin Walker will pull his finger out now that he’s editor of Broadway Baby. At ScotsGay last year it never seemed as if he took a punt on anything very much – most of what he saw was couched in terms such as “this is always good,” “brilliant as usual” etc. You […]


John-Paul Stephenson had his work cut out at last year’s Fringe, where he was keeping the Gigglebeats reviewing boat afloat by himself. With that in mind he did a pretty good job all in all. Taking himself to some things that were off the beaten track, and several of the Free Fringe/Free Festival offerings, he […]


Carrie Gooch July 21st, 2014 by

Carrie Gooch seems unwilling to come to terms with the fact that she has accepted the role of critic, and so must hit us with her unmitigated opinions, and pass off these opinions as objective truth. It’s a great responsibility: too much, arguably, for a mere mortal – and yet that is what the job […]


Bruce Dessau July 17th, 2014 by

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 […]


Roxane Hudon July 17th, 2014 by

Roxane Hudon isn’t a terrible reviewer, but she does possess some annoying tics that become more so as you read through her canon. By the end of it you feel you’ve pulled on a sandpaper vest. For one thing, Hudon seems tied up with her own preconceptions and determined to bore us with what they […]


Ben Williams July 16th, 2014 by

Ben Williams – young though he is – does not let youthful exuberance get the better of him. His reviews are sober, sensible and invariably clock in at just under 300 words. He gives a good taste of what he’s seen without banging the stuffing out of it. In short he’s a disciplined writer who […]


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