Adam Riches: The Critic’s Way
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...