Last week I interviewed an Australian author whose latest book is getting rave reviews pretty much everywhere.
“Oh, I didn’t see that one,” she said about a glowing write-up in the Australian. “I never read reviews.”
Instead she gets a trusted friend to read them and then give her the general tenor of what they are saying. A bad review goes unmentioned. And in a funny way – for her – it’s like they never happened.
And so, she is able to return to her writing desk every day, untroubled by what others are saying about her. She does not find herself erupting in a volcanic, messy fury and tweeting the reviewer in the middle of the night that they obviously didn’t understand the references to Seneca or the symbolism of the dove and that basically they are a total brainless moron.
Or something like that.
Which brings us to comedian (or “funny man” if he’s not your cup of tea) Lawrence Mooney. Who would have read the review of his show at the Adelaide Fringe festival except for a couple of hundred people – maybe – who were in the area and thought jeez that bloke who hosts the ABC’s New Year’s Eve coverage is performing. What’s he like?
Now many, many more people have read the only vaguely damning three-star review because of Mooney’s big, aggressive reaction to it. As far as scathing goes, the review wasn’t even anywhere near boiling point.
Traditionally there is no right of reply to a bad review – and fortunes and reputations have been lost on the back of a bad review by a powerful critic.
Social media (particularly the home of thin-skinned Twitter, recently abandoned by Stephen Fry over matters of alleged offence) gives performers a chance to strike back. So you can, like Lawrence, say that your reviewer is a “deadshit”, “amateur” and an “idiot” and has “a tiny mind”.
Attacks like this aim to destabilise the authority of a reviewer and send a message to future reviewers – which is basically, “unless you give me rave reviews I will come after you”.
One of the points Mooney made was that the reviewer, Isabella Fowler, also wrote about real estate and food. What would she know about comedy?
Newspapers like the Advertiser put all sorts of reporters on the reviewing beat when there’s a big festival in town – particularly a festival like the Fringe, which is sprawling, brilliant and uneven. The beauty of these festivals is the serendipity. Some little act you’ve never heard of will be a revelation – and you only found out about it because of a 300-word review in the ‘Tiser from someone who came in with an open mind and loved it.
Conversely a more well-known act may be less impressive, and it’s good to know about that in advance as well.
So what of the charge that a person is not “qualified” to review comedy (or music or food or theatre or books for that matter)?
I hate to break the news, but there is no qualification for being a critic. There’s no critic school where you are required to watch 3,000 hours of standup before you get your reviewer’s license.
Book critics in Australia are often writers themselves, and it’s a small industry. The Saturday Paper publishes only the initials of their critics for a variety of reasons, but I suspect there’d be plates thrown at parties if their names were revealed. Music critics are often street press veterans of a thousand gigs and a thousand hours on sticky carpet.
Is it enough to make them a critic? The person getting the glowing review would say – yes! Of course! It is, as always, in the eye of the beholder.
The test should be similar to the test used frequently by the courts – the reasonable or ordinary person test.
That is, how would a normal person, exercising prudence and without vendetta, who is not too far removed from the intended audience (for example you wouldn’t send a synth-pop millennial to review the Edinburgh Tattoo) respond to this show?
The authority of the critic should reside – in part – in their very ordinariness, their ability to see the show as an intended audience member would see it.
Of course there are critics around the world who are not ordinary people – they are the theatre critics who have seen every performance of Measure for Measure for example, staged by every major company over the last 40 years. They come at a show with deep knowledge and an intimate sense of the work’s context and history. Michael Billington at the Guardian in London is one such theatre reviewer. Ben Brantley, theatre critic at the New York Times is another authoritative voice.
But when reviewing comedy at the Fringe – where there are thousands of shows – staff reporters are brought in.
Although critics are hated by pretty much everyone, I am heartened by the fact that newspapers and websites still allocate resources to reviews. That reviewer is there to serve the readers and evaluate whether or not the show is worth your 90 minutes and your $40. Performers should think very carefully about trashing critics and harassing them. We don’t want a press that is cowed or bullied into pulling back on reviews because of fear the performer will then say all sorts of vile things about the reviewer on social media.
What the performer can do is say all sorts of vile things about the reviewer down at the pub, with his mates, while they buy him beers and say, “maaaate you’re hilarious! Don’t worry about what she says, no one’s going to read it anyway. Tomorrow’s fish’n’chip wrappers”.
That’s what’s been happening for all time, all over the world in the laneway bars near Melbourne town hall, in the pubs near Shaftesbury Avenue and the bars off Broadway, and probably in the 16th century at the taverns of Stratford-upon-Avon – clumps of angry people consoling each other, and moaning about critics.
And Lawrence, mate, I know it hurts – I have been there.
I’ve written two books that have taken years from my life and what did some reviewer at BOSS magazine at the Australian Financial Review say about This Restless Life? Something along the lines of “this person should have gone into therapy and on a course of anti-depressants rather than write this book”.
Boss magazine! Boss magazine! How could you? For years I stamped on Boss when I saw it, I tore it up in cafes, I bagged out Boss to all who would listen.
But to go after the reviewer personally? That breaks the compact that you have when making art – whether it be writing standup, making television, painting or conceptual art, choreographing a ballet, writing a book, performing in a band, whatever. You are entering an agreement – essentially a gentlemen’s agreement that you will suffer the slings and arrows of criticism with some dignity, and ultimately hope that your work reaches, and is understood by, your audience.
Or else just be like the novelist I interviewed, and don’t bother reading the reviews at all.
