comedy feature

Listen up all you critics…

Fringe legend and ThreeWeeks favourite Brendon Burns offers a few tips for those writing the reviews in Edinburgh this year

Hello all. Although I will this year be arriving in Edinburgh later than usual, I’m still compelled to compile some sort of annual, pompous, and presumptuous survival guide.

This year I’d like to address some dos and don’ts for comedy reviewers. Now, I want to make this absolutely clear: I think it’s brilliant that I’m in a circuit so massive that even comedy fans can make a living off of reviewing it. The fact that said industry is big enough to comprise a large number of entirely different tastes and voices out there is to be even more celebrated.

But here are some common complaints, voiced by peers and punters alike. At the one time of year where every man and his dog notoriously dubs him or herself an expert on the art, taking note of these suggestions might help raise you above the average dog walker out there.

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Don’t repeat jokes.

Pleeeeease! Some take ages to write, with a sense of wordplay and tinkering seldom understood. By repeating them, you spoil them for everyone. And, besides, your delivery is almost always shit.

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Reviewer know thyself.

A sense of humour begins at home. The best comedy reviewers I know are self aware about their own human shortcomings. The Scotsman’s Kate Copstick is a self-publicising berserker; Chortle’s Steve Bennett an Internet geek that has been driven mad by seeing way too many open spots. They know this, make no steps to hide it and it’s apparent in their writing. As comedy is so subjective it’s only fair to allow the reader the opportunity to consider the source.

I’m not playing favourites here, either. Kate has been quite open about hating most of my work. And I’ve really hated a lot of her reviews. But, to her credit, I (and anyone else I know) have always found it quite easy to tell when I’d abhor something she’s liked and vice versa. She once said the Bill Hicks tribute show was as good as the real thing, for fuck’s sake. Four stars or not, you’d still stay away in droves.

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If you’re going to slag someone’s comedy off, you’d better make it funny.

Otherwise, piss off. You really don’t belong here. Julia Chamberlain, a reviewer known in the industry for actually working in it, once wrote of an act, “You still quite like the guy; even as he acknowledges his fleeing audience, he does it with grace, but it would have been a kindness for someone to point out to him before he blew the money that this is baffling, grandiloquent crap”. To my mind, a fine marriage of eloquence and profanity. I understand the act in question even found it funny. Job well done.

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Don’t crowbar in French or other foreign phrases.

Pretension and linguistic prowess are not viable substitutes for an actual sense of humour. It reeks of intellectual desperation, you’re not fooling anyone, and you look like a wanker. See above and sod off back to the Opera.

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How’d the gig actually go?

I get it. I’ve sat through a comic storming and found myself bewildered and bemused. But I always have to give it to them: they fucking stormed. Lifting the roof off night in/night out for nearly a month is hard. Really, really, really, really, really, really hard. You’re blessed with some of the best in the world here. Coming from a paltry to non-existent comedy scene, I sometimes get frustrated that you don’t know how good you’ve got it. And fine, say they sucked, you hated it, whatever… but if you don’t acknowledge that they actually stormed the gig from start to finish, then you’re just a flat out liar.

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There is no such thing as a hack topic, only hack application.

Our job is to be relevant and sometimes obscure not the other way round. And even when addressing the obscure we have to make it relevant. I’ve read reviewers complain about comics talking about men and women. This is pure immaturity and the babblings of the rank amateur. My grandfather went to his grave without fully comprehending women. If any man, woman or child can tell me how they’ve figured out the battle of the sexes and that’s all there is to say on the matter, I think that nothing will ever get done again and it may be the end of society, as we know it.

If a comedian has a Barack Obama routine, don’t switch off at the outset saying to yourself, “Oh God here comes another Obama routine”. That’s just critical algebra and you do yourself and everyone else a disservice. He’s the first black President for Christ’s sake. How can we not talk about it? Blind cynicism is exactly that – blind.

One of the greatest compliments comedians give to one another is “that’s the greatest (insert popular topic here) routine I’ve seen yet. You’ve nailed it”. Once, after doing an impression of Goofy the Disney cartoon, Johnny Carson whispered to Steve Martin as he threw to commercial “You’ll use everything you ever knew”. That’s Johnny Carson talking to Steve Martin. Or, in our circles, Rembrandt talking to Picasso. Are you going to take heed of what they have to say? Or are you going to butt in and insist that they use less blue?

These are merely humble pleas from a man that loves and respects this art form with all his heart. And if at any point you’ve found yourself thinking, “Who the fuck does this guy think he is, telling me my job?” Please see, “Reviewer know thyself”, or should I say, “Critique, connais-toi toi-meme”.


Brendon Burns: Comedy Good Yeah Silly Side C**t, Pleasance Courtyard, 28 – 29 Aug, 10.30pm (11.30pm), £16.00 (£14.50), fpp32.

The Brendon Burns Sober Not Clean DVD is released on 24 Aug.

published: Aug-2009

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