I know quite a few people who are
professional stand ups, actors, writers and directors. Occasionally, they are
all of those, and more. What unites a great many of them is their shared hatred
of reviewers. If it’s not hatred, then it’s a sense of bored dismissal, an
agreement that reviewers generally don’t know what the hell they’re talking
about. Their dislike includes the reviewers who actually like them, and give
them positive write-ups, which seems at least fair. Another thing that all
these performers share is the knowledge that I myself am an occasional
reviewer, which as you might imagine, comes up reasonably rarely in
conversation, presumably in a failed attempt to avoid any awkwardness.
What then, is the point of a
reviewer? Or perhaps more crucially, what is the point of being a reviewer? Is
it just to see shows for free? Absolutely not (Obviously it is that a little
bit). Is it a misplaced confidence in the importance of your own opinion and
voice? Ditto, and (ditto). For me, it’s increasingly about my own learning. I
myself am an actor, director, writer (at least that’s what I tell myself), and
it’s fascinating to see what other people are doing with the same ideas that
I’m working on in any given year. Plus, it’s just interesting to have a
conversation about whatever it is you’ve just seen. It doesn’t even matter
that, in the whirlwind of the internet, not many people are going to listen.
Let’s be honest: that’s how usual conversations work, too.
There are certainly different
types of reviewers, ones that are funny, ones that are incoherent, ones that
simply retell the plot of what they see, and ones that are desperate to show
off how much they know. I’m still trying to work out what kind of reviewer I
want to be, and I suspect that up until now I’ve been all of those things.
Well, perhaps not the first one. What I think a reviewer has no choice about is
that they have to be interesting to read. That’s all a review is, after all: a
collection of words in the same space. And as such, the only purpose – the only
point – is to have those words read. So they may as well be at least not
boring.
To that end, I try to impose upon
myself certain rules when writing a review. These rules do not (and should not)
apply to every single reviewer, and indeed I’m pretty sure I’ve failed at a
couple of these rules in more than a few reviews, particularly when it’s the
middle of the fringe festival and I’m trying to write six reviews in half as
many hours and my thesaurus has given up trying to give me alternatives for
‘compelling’. But as self-imposed rules go, I think they’re pretty sound, and I
share them with you now in the interests of making myself a better writer, and
possibly filling up another blog entry.
·
Say
Something Nice. I think it’s extraordinarily rare that you’ll sit through
something that doesn’t have something to recommend it. It may be a production
that has somehow missed the central message of its own script, but there may be
a supporting actress that is always magnetic to watch. I’m not saying that you
have to lie – after all, there are potentially audience members who are reading
your review in order to sway their decision as to where to go tonight, and it
won’t do anyone any favours if you say only good things when it’s actually a
pretty shoddy production – but if you can’t find something positive to say
(even if it’s a piece of backhanded hackery like ‘I liked what they were trying
to achieve’), then you’re probably in the wrong job. Your parents managed the
old ‘well, the set was impressive’ lie at your first production of Jocasta Baby
Killer, so you can find something nice to say about the LX design. Oh, and by
the way: when I say that you might be sitting through a bad production – do sit
through it. Until the end. Yes, I know audiences say that life is too short for
bad theatre, and if you leave early you might get hold of the good bratwursts
before the stall sells out, but they have the excuse of being the public, and
the public are expected to be rude. If you’re reviewing – for a newspaper, or
for an online blog read only by you – you stay until the bows. It’s the only
way to write an accurate review.
·
Say
Something Quotable. This gets at the
heart of what the point of a reviewer is, I think. Your words are your stock in
trade, even if you’re an unpaid freelance. I have read plenty of beautifully
written reviews, full of fulsome praise, excitedly claiming the show as the
best thing the reviewer has seen … but the review itself is useless. Because of
the way that the sentences are structured, there’s nothing that the media team
can cut and paste to use on posters. And, despite what you may think, most
groups are wary of editing quotes from reviews to make more sense in shorter
form. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, however. It still has to be
true, however. You need to tread a very fine line between being nice and
quotable, and just hacking out a line that’s so relentlessly positive that you
know it’s going to be used on the poster. Just remember, if it’s on the poster,
your name is attached to it.
·
Say
Something Funny (Or Interesting). I have problems with this, I admit.
Despite that, I think it’s the most important of my own self-imposed rules.
Local press are notoriously bad at filling up most of their word count with a
bland synopsis of the plot. That’s not a review: that’s a bland synopsis of the
plot. What I try to do in my reviews (and probably increasingly fail at, the
deeper into a month long fringe I get) is to have a discussion. There are
plenty of reviewers who are excellent at reporting what happened on stage, or
how successful the costume choices were, and on occasion, I will be one of
those reviewers. But I also like to be a bit chatty in my reviews, veer off
subject slightly (as much as my editor will allow me), and discuss my own,
personal reaction to what I’ve seen. I don’t mean that I’ll use the word ‘I’ in
my reviews (the reviewer is the least interesting aspect of their own review),
but I like to treat the reviews as an extension of the types of conversations I
imagine audience members to be having on the way out of a show. At the most
extreme end of this rule is benign arrogance: I would like to think that one
day, some readers are reading my reviews for my voice, regardless of what show
I’m reviewing.
·
Say
Something Helpful. This is probably the most contentious of my self-imposed
rules and certainly the one that I do the least. It again hits back at the
heart of what the point of being a reviewer is. Is it liking the sound of your
own voice? Or is it being some sort of half-assed dramaturg? Those two
possibilities, I admit, are not exactly alien to one another. There is
certainly some kind of arrogance in anybody – a reviewer, an audience member,
an uninvited harasser on twitter – telling you that you ‘should have done it
like this’ Presumably the stand up, the writer, the actors company, whatever –
has spent several months making their show the best it can be. The last thing
they need is some hack (who hasn’t spent several months making their show the
best it can be) coming in and giving their unwarranted opinion. And yet. If
there is an aspect of the show that frustrates you – pace, a sexist script, or
a confusing ending, for instance, then I think it’s appropriate to discuss that
in your review. After all, it is entirely possible that you are absolutely
correct in your judgement, and if that’s the case, it’s only fair on both the
audiences, and more importantly, the performers, that you bring it to light. If
you’re wrong, then fair enough, all the other reviews will highlight that, and
you will be ostracised as you deserve. But if you are correct, it may well be that
your review is the first time they’ve had a problem that has been nagging them
all through production defined, and your critique may be the thing that
jumpstarts them from a mediocre show to a great one. And you will have helped,
perhaps. Just remember point one. Say something nice.
·
Don’t Say
What It’s About. I hate spoilers. I have a whole essay to bore you with
another time about spoilers. It’s cheap, nasty and lazy. Essentially, by giving
away parts of the plot – particularly the surprising and exciting bits – you
are highlighting that you don’t actually know what to write about, that you
don’t have an opinion. When you give away plot points in your review, you are
filling up your word count by basically cutting and pasting the good work that
someone else has done, and passing it off as your own. This is very cheap
writing. I understand that some reviewers want to show off that they’ve ‘got
it’, or that they have understood the more obscure references (I myself have
sailed perilously close to this more than once), or indeed to communicate to
the performer that they laughed (or cried) in all the right places. I
understand also that it’s challenging to talk about a show that you’ve really
loved (or hated) without discussing what’s happened onstage. But, not to labour
the point too much, if you are telling me what the story is, then you are not
discussing the production. If you are telling me the plot (Prince’s dad gets
killed, he fails to do anything about it for three hours), then you are not
telling me anything that I couldn’t read in a script, or probably in the
company’s own flyer. I recognise that you don’t want your review to be too
opaque or obscure, but if you can’t write five hundred words without giving
away the ending or blowing all the best jokes, then perhaps reviewing isn’t for
you.
So. Those are
the rules that I attempt to impose upon myself in each review. As I’ve
indicated, I more than occasionally fail. But I do try. It’s important to
remember that reviews are not disposable and throwaway, despite what my performer
friends might say and hope. It’s important to remember that the reviews one
writes will actually be read by at least one person. And as such, there’s a
certain responsibility. Now, that’s a rather portentous and pretentious line on
which to end, but it has the ring of truth to it. Reviewing isn’t just about
the sound of your own voice and seeing lots of shows for free. (I’ve already
told you it is, a bit.)
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