Stephen Grant :: Post details: Reviewing the reviewers

17/08/08

Reviewing the reviewers - Categories: News - Stephen Grant @ 04:25:53 am

I’m not sure what the origin of the statement, ‘comedy is the most subjective artform in the world’ is, but it has so many uses. It can allow you to shrug off a terse appraisal from a mouthy punter who didn’t like your act; it can help justify a glowing reference of a comedian you cannot stand or do not rate, and is a great appeasing statement when a group of people go to see a show and as many of them hate it as love it. It works so well for a simple reason; it’s true.

Which is why the whole concept of reviewing comedy should be taken with a pinch of salt – everyone can speak for themselves, but only the most pompous individual could genuinely think that they’ll speak for everybody when it comes to assessing what is ‘funny’. The only opinion any reviewer can state that is unarguable is their own, and even in a small room, that opinion is a tiny percentage of the total.

Of course, in comedy, the credibility of those opinions varies on the basis of how knowledgeable and balanced the reviewer is with comedy as a genre. And the very best reviewers can be determined by a number of factors; including what they choose to ignore, which is just as important as what they notice. For example, they’ll ignore the environmental concerns such as how uncomfortable their seat might be, or technical problems during the show, that are clearly unique to the moment in time they are there; and bizarre occurrences outside of the comedian’s remit such as persistent hecklers, or external noises that are clearly one-offs. And this skill becomes even more pertinent in Edinburgh, when a show will be performed over a ‘run’ and the reviewer has to be able to imagine the typical scenario the show will be seen in, even if the show seen is far from a normal one.

The only element that it remains a grey area as to whether it should be ignored, is the reaction of the rest of the audience. A weak reviewer who dislikes (or likes) a show when the rest of the crowd acts the complete opposite may feel brow-beaten into changing their opinion. Fortunately, most reviewers don’t do this. However, the opposite can be equally disingenuous. In recent Edinburgh years I’ve seen comments such as ‘this show was crap; and the only reason the rest of the crowd laughed is because they were friends/fans/delusional/retarded.’ Can I just tell the reviewers out there, this rarely ever happens; if someone else laughs and you didn’t, it’s because *they* found it funny, and you didn’t. Simple as that. You aren’t wrong, but neither are they. Sure, it might have been a joke that was ‘beneath’ you, or possibly, one that went ‘over your head’, but it’s still a joke even if you didn’t laugh. A comedian has to learn very early on that an audience is very rarely ‘wrong’ – it’s themselves. This is something a reviewer doesn’t have to learn, but it would give them a much more rounded perspective if they did.

A slightly more realistic and considerate comment will read along the lines of ‘this part of the show wasn’t for me, but large portions of the crowd found it funny’. This at least acknowledges that some people enjoyed it. The problem here lies in the fact that it’s really easy for the most established reviewers to be pompous enough to think that an entire audience is wrong – and in some rare cases this includes reviews where the reviewer liked it much more than the audience (though these are rare occurrences indeed, mainly because a ‘not-as-comedy-literate’ crowd will be supposedly easier to coax into laughter than your hardened, comedy saturated journo). I’ve seen reviewers argue an audience to be comprehensively wrong, proving themselves to be seemingly as worthless as the most inexperienced reviewer who may base their opinion entirely on duration and depth of laughter. But there is a good reason for this; if you see enough comedy, you become hardened to the simplest devices and the hackiest lines, and like any drug dependency, the basic simple stuff no longer rocks your boat. You need your comedy tougher, more layered, more intricate and more intense; and suddenly the route-one gags that were knocking you senseless are suddenly leaving you cold. You scowl at the comedically illiterate crowds who worship the most basic and derivative of acts; even though those performers could wipe the floor with a full room of revellers in weekend gigs around the country, when they play to the sort of audience who may only watch live comedy once a year, or maybe even once in their lifetime.

Which is why those sort of ‘circuit acts’ get butchered in Edinburgh reviews by the more established reviewers, but sometimes worshipped by the newer reviewers who don’t possess a wealth of comedy viewing to judge them against. And in recent years, the gulf between these two types of reviewers, both essential to the constant drip-feed of press on acts, has widened and become somewhat acrimonious. The Scotsman has taken to boasting that their reviews are written by ‘serious journalists, not unqualified students’, though it has to accept that the vast majority of their journos were once exactly the latter, and were it not for these publications, they wouldn’t have got the skills they now have. Search online for the reviews of Terry Saunders for a good example of this gulf – and when there, you’ll see one of the most negative reviews of him complaining about the room he is playing in. This is no isolated incident either; I’ve seen reviewers complaining about the seat layout, the temperature (it’s a lot hotter for us you know) and the venue staff outside the door. Fair enough, these are all valid comments, but they’re not a reflection on the show or the performer, and shouldn’t be used to rate them as such. And certainly reviews criticising what the act is wearing only highlights the inanity of the reviewer, nothing else.

Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg. One reviewer recently commented at the top of his review how he was 5 minutes late to arrive at a show and was worried he might get picked on when he walked in halfway through. For God’s sake, how can you review a show that you missed nearly a tenth of? That same reviewer then prophesised as to why that comic was on at a 11:30pm slot, concluding that it was the smuttiness of their material; when clearly, as any comic on their debut year knows, that comic was on at this time because that was the only timeslot offered to him. I’ve seen comics blamed for so many elements that are outside of our control I wouldn’t be surprised to see a show marked down this year because it was raining.

And there’s the maddest part of it all; ratings, or more specifically, the star ratings. This matters – and I mean, really, really matters – to Edinburgh comics in a way that probably only Olympic athletes can currently comprehend. But the whole concept of a 5 degree rating for ‘the world’s most subjective artform’ is ludicrous. There will always be people who love a show and likewise, people who hate it. Sure enough, the proportions will vary as inevitably, some shows are better than others, sometimes exponentially so, but if you catch that rare person who loved a seemingly bobbins show, then bang – there you have it – a 5 star review goes up on the posters and suddenly it’s the talk of the town. And it really is. Look at John Gordillo; a great comedian, but at the Fringe outset, not appearing to have any particular selling point to pop his head over the parapet. Suddenly, there’s a 5 star review in Chortle, and the press and the public descend on his show like it’s a helipad. Totally deserving, but all as the result of a whim of one reviewer. I remember this effect from my 5 star review last year that helped me practically sell-out my run; I was under no illusions as to thinking this rating meant I had a perfect show, but it certainly meant that everyone was suddenly curious as to what it was I was doing that was so well regarded.

Within the comedy industry, that rating means an ugly competitive streak raises its head, and suddenly people are comparing themselves to comics they’ve secretly felt superior/inferior to all year. But on the basis of what? The random preference of a 19 year old Geography student? The system is so flaky and inherently flawed that most comedians would be better off rolling dice to determine a pecking order.

And of course, the flipside to this, is the 1-star review. I remember Glenn Wool getting one, and Danny Bhoy too. These guys couldn’t be more different – yet from a circuit perspective, both are cast iron headliners. What happened? Well, their shows both rubbed reviewers up the wrong way. So dripping in vitriol were these reviews that you started to wonder if it was personal – after all, I imagine on the nights in question, not only did these guys do a good show, they probably had the rest of the crowd in fits of laughter. The 1 star review is something special; you almost have to work at it for it to be that negative. A good comic who just stood up reading jokes from a book would get 2 stars. To get a 1 star review, you need to mine deeply into the most hated element of a reviewers psyche and twang all its strings. It takes effort.

But you can go lower that 1 star. The edfringe website allows you to select 0 stars as a review, which gives you an effective range of 6. And Broadway Baby has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and ‘5 plus’ stars. That’s also a range of 6. And on top of that, the Guardian’s ‘rapid reviews’ give – wait for it – a mark out of 10. Are these rating systems diluting the star system? No, not at all – it was always arbitrary at best and only someone with the value system of an exam marker would see any relevance. It’s desperately sad that it is the wording of the review that should be key; the Stage don’t give stars and never have, and their reward for this is that most of their Edinburgh reviews rarely make it onto comedian’s quotes, so obsessed as they are with ‘being scored’.

The worst thing about the star rating is that it makes no allowances for the subjective nature of comedy; it is just a scoring preference of the reviewer and the reviewer alone – yet it will never be treated as such. I recently saw a review this year which I discussed with Russell Kane where they said an act was ‘completely like Marmite – you’ll either love him or you’ll hate him’. A perfectly realistic quote. Star rating? 3.

Anyway, tonight I had the Stage, Fest, and The Scotsman in, and the reviewers in question from two of them are responsible for some of the quotes in my article above. They all saw the same show and I expect three completely different reviews. Will I be annoyed by that? Will I fuck. It’ll prove how subjective comedy is and be honest, we all knew that already.

Just to wrap up, here’s my favourite review fuck-up so far.

All Andrews are equal, but some Andrews are more equal than others.