Reviewing the Fringe: a review (Part I)

Part I : Who are you to judge?

The Fringe is huge. There are around 2,500 shows here, meaning that it’s physically impossible to see everything without access to some form of time travel.

For the acts, most of which make a heavy loss, it’s hard to stand out. So it’s understandable that they’re desperate for anything that will give them the edge over the competition. As soon as a good review comes along it gets stapled to the flier for that show and soon the cries on the Royal Mile change from “Come see our show – 2 for 1 tonight!” to “Come see our 5-star rated show!” Performers don’t dread bad reviews as much as they dread no reviews at all.

That’s a bit of a problem when even the most dedicated review will get to less than a hundred shows over the course of the Fringe. So where are all these stars coming from? The same place as porn and Maddy McCann jokes: the internet.

People at the Fringe don’t seem too bothered where they’re getting their stars from, as long as they can put something on their flier, which is why they're happy to cite minor websites and a lot of promotional material reads like somebody’s Firefox history. This new trend has upset The Scotsman, who published the slightly snotty article “With all these reviewers, everyone is seeing stars”, and The Stage, whose “The proliferation of critics and star ratings in Edinburgh” amply demonstrates just how big a stick Matt Shenton has up his arse.

The gist of both of these articles is: who are these people and what qualifies them to review? It’s tempting to respond by saying 'welcome to the 21st century, granddad'. This is the age of Blogspot and Twitter, and never has the phrase 'everyone’s a critic' been more accurate. In fact, the people running these websites deserve respect simply for having a longer attention span than most of the rest of us.

But the serious journos do have a point, kind of. I fully respect the right of individuals to run review blogs, and often those blogs have more insightful analysis than the pros, but there are some cowboys who seem to willing to give 5 stars to anyone who can stand up for an hour without dropping their microphone, and this will inevitably lead to star inflation. If every show has a big ***** on the flier, then what’s the point of having reviews at all? Does anyone ever pick a movie just because it says ‘OUTSTANDING’ on the cover, or pick a book because another author has said, ‘An important new voice’ on the dust cover? No, because we’re all media-savvy enough to know that these are soft reviews. Fringe audiences will cotton on, if they haven’t already.

The question of where these 'soft' reviews are coming from is interesting. The two articles above pin the blame on amateur reviewers saying nice things about their friends. Again, welcome to the 21st century, granddad. Bloggers don’t have friends.

The real problem is the circular nature of this publicity machine. After submitting a few reviews to The Skinny this year, I noticed something about my reviews. When I gave four or five stars, my reviews would be blogged, tweeted, linked to, put on posters, stapled to fliers and pinned on the wall of the venue. When I gave three stars, even a good three stars, the review tends to sink without a trace.

I don’t run The Skinny, so I’m not too bothered about how many readers we get, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you run a small website and give a lot of good reviews, you’ll in turn get a huge amount of publicity, making yourself a name on the scene and ensuring entry into the big venues at next year’s Fringe. So the motive is definitely there to inflate your ratings a bit. It’s clearly already happening on some sites (one has already jokingly earned the nickname fourstars.com for its refusal to give a bad review) and it will happen on others.

There’s no way of stopping this. A good review is always going to be promoted by the act being reviewed. It’s an evolutionary thing. But audiences are smart and the internet is a powerful tool for weeding out this nonsense. Instant user reviews on Twitter are gaining as much standing as published reviews, and sites like comedy.co.uk run excellent review aggregators, allowing a side-by-side comparison of each opinion. It's easy to see who's attempting proper journalism and who's taking the mick.

So my advice to amateur reviewers – and yes, I feel qualified to give advice after a whole three weeks of experience – is to stay objective. Don’t panic if your site is only getting three hits a day. Work on your style, keep the reviews consistent, be honest and try to build a rapport with your readers. If you blog it, truthfully, they will come.

In part II: writing bad reviews, and why I’m actually the worst person in the world to review comedy.