Two Edinburgh fringe shows this year take comedy reviewing as their subject, one of them in direct response to so-so notices at last year's festival. Andrew Doherty's Reviewers Welcome … to Die! is a folk-horror spoof about an up-himself critic obliged by demons to learn the error of his ways. It springs from Doherty's dismay at receiving a three-star crit (“one of the three worst scores you can get!”) for his sophomore show Sad Gay Aids Play – after critical hosannahs greeted his debut the year before.
A critic's comeuppance
In the show, Doherty's anti-hero Felix Chatelier is a preening, nepotistic snob, scorning the talent he purports to judge while nursing his own thwarted artistic delusions. “How sad, lonely and pathetic I am,” trills Chatelier, at least until popular and sexy playwriting genius “Andrew Doherty” shows up to shepherd the unlovely critic towards redemption. This happens at a fringe festival in the fictional Midlands town of Billington, a name that long-time readers of Guardian theatre reviews may recognise.
All of this unfolds in the spoof scary-movie style familiar from Doherty's hit Gay Witch Sex Cult, another Wicker Man-ish affair pitting a dopey outsider against yokel locals and dark forces beyond everyone's ken. Just as it trades in genre stereotype, so the show's take on critics seldom outpaces cliche – although the closing gag about Chatelier's constitutional inability to dole out that final, fifth star is enjoyed. But critics get off lightly here, in that Reviewers Welcome is as much a mickey-take of thin-skinned artists bearing grudges as of those arbiters of taste who decorate or dismiss them with a swish of the pen.
A burlesque of critical arrogance
When Adam Riches bounds on stage in character as eminent comedy critic Caliban Monroe, his show The Critic's Way looks like it might land uncomfortably closer to the bone. Scottish accent? Replica Scottish football sportswear? But The Critic's Way soon devolves into another of Riches' familiar burlesques on swaggering but shallow masculinity with strictly limited insight into Caliban's critical calling. The persona makes Chatelier look multidimensional by comparison, as Riches loudly deplores comedians, claims to have invented star ratings and reads from his now-remaindered titular treatise on the art of what he calls “the 'tique”.
There's little of the promised “razor-sharp satire”, although – like most of Riches' uproarious interactive work – his show is never less than a hoot. “Who wants to be a comedy critic?” he barks, eyeballing the audience. Inevitably, behind the arrogant veneer, Monroe is another “sad, lonely and pathetic” individual. The “voice of a veneration” no longer, he's out of a job after a victim of his hatchet work hits back against one particularly indelicate review. You could just about read this as an exploration of a changing climate for criticism, in which speech is neurotically policed, and ideas like objective judgment and the single authoritative voice are both critically out of fashion.
Two shows, one verdict
Or you could enjoy Riches' exuberant faux-workshop for what it is: a 50-minute piece of nonsense revelling in the archetype of the cultural snob, in love with his own supposed erudition, seething with resentment that to deploy it he must piggyback on the work of – shudder! – mere comedians.
Considering these two shows together as a critique of the service comedy reviewers render – well, there's ridicule (fair enough) but perhaps grudging affection too. It's probably a three-star review then for me and my counterparts – but I like to think it reads like a four. Andrew Doherty's Reviewers Welcome … to Die! is Upstairs at Pleasant Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 30 August; Adam Riches' The Critic's Way is at Cow Cafe at Underbelly, Cowgate, Edinburgh, until 30 August.
