There are two major stand-up shows about critics at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and obviously I went to see them both almost immediately. Part of me wishes I hadn’t, though, or at least thinks I should have left more of a gap between the two.
That’s not to say that Andrew Doherty’s Reviewers Welcome… TO DIE! and Adam Riches’ The Critic’s Way are similar to each other, because they’re not. But what I loved about Doherty’s show was that it was obviously personal; a man miffed by the three-star reviews dished out to his previous show now channelling his petty annoyance into a massively unreasonable but very funny Lovecraftian revenge fantasy.
I’m sure veteran oddball Riches has a lifetime of gripes against comedy critics (who are explicitly his target vs Doherty’s theatre critics) but his show comes across as less enjoyably personal. As with a lot of his work, it’s loopy character study in which he loses himself in an immaculate accent.
Here he is Caliban Munroe, a plummy, self-regarding Scots comedy critic who is hosting a ‘masterclass’ for wannabe critics based around his magnum opus The Critic’s Way, a ‘52 page’ pamphlet of pure, self-indulgent drivel.
It’s wilfully silly: Riches has crafted a story about a deluded, down-on-his-luck oddball who has shades of a more highfalutin Alan Partridge during one of his lower ebbs. Talking us through a career that peaked with a long stint working for The Scotsman (which he recently departed under a cloud), Munroe is now attempting to relaunch himself: he has a podcast ready to go (if only somebody will pay to produce it) and speaks in an aggressively cringey spray of neologisms as he takes us through a chaotic, self-aggrandising, somewhat pitiful workshop.
It doesn’t come across as a mean-spirited show modelled on anyone in particular and while I’m sure there’s more than a kernel of Riches’ personal feelings about critics informing some of Munroe’s more dickish tendencies, it’s ultimately just pretty goofy.
Riches’ great gift is submerging himself totally in a character and accent, something he’s got so good at that he’s started to make non-comedy shows vis a vis last year’s Jimmy and this year’s The Captain. By comparison to both those (and Doherty’s intensely personal screed), The Critic’s Way feels a little lightweight and throwaway. While I’m sure it’s not an issue now, Riches frequently forgot his lines when I saw it: not a big deal as he was very funny about it and never broke character, but I’d imagine he might have been focussing his efforts on nailing the more ‘serious’ The Captain, which had a much longer preview period. Still if this show is a trifle in comparison, it’s a fun one.
