the adjustment bureau

our review finally came out! hurrah! feel free to read it here, if you like.

or here:

obviously i slid down a big ramp of disappointment as i read it. i know for a fact that our show wasn't a 2-star unfulfillment, and other independent reviews prove my theory is not misled self-awareness.

i thought i'd check out other reviews by the same reviewer, and - good for her - she's managed to write six reviews for the edinburgh fringe. that's a lot of work. they're each at least 120 words each. that works out more than ONE HUNDRED words every week since the beginning of the fringe. that's a lot for a student on summer break. phew. i wish i had that pace when i was writing Slides of Chaos, then i'd still be doing it. and i loved the process of writing it. it was amazing. i was working with some brilliant people, making something brilliant happen.

and then we came to actually do the show, which was met with a resounding thunderstorm of positivity. for a free show that the audience could have wandered in and out of, we had regular audience members who stood (we often ran out of chairs) and stayed standing for the entire show. even ones who had to eventually be tugged out of the room by their partners because they had expensive tickets for another show starting somewhere else.

this happened more than once.

so i read some other reviews by 'georgina evenden' - our prolific ThreeWeeks.co.uk wordsmith. this one was my favourite:

or - in short - "eerily pretentious"

please feel free to have a read of her other reviews. i did. if you want a summary, basically she doesn't like comedy that much. except for a night of comedy that had different stand-ups on every night including Robin Ince and Stewart Lee (41st best stand-up of all time), which she gave a whole-hearted 3-stars-out-of-five. it seems a bit odd that someone who doesn't like comedy is asked to review comedy (a genre that requires audience members to have wholly generous, giving spirits). if you're going to do that, you need to send someone who can view the performance in an educated, unprejudiced and erudite way. and do it with a degree of conviction.

our reviewer used the term "tits up" and then happily put her name at the bottom.

so be it.

that's our review. that's how some review websites have to work. ThreeWeeks attempted to review two-thousand shows in a short time, and had to make do with some of the people who volunteered as "budding young journos."

i'll continue to base the opinions of the audience on the opinions of the actual audience. which looked something like this:

“that was the best free show i saw at the fringe, and one of the best shows over all.”
- audience member 22/08/10

"i loved the unashamed geeky references."
- dylan emery of Showstopper!: the improvised musical 28/08/10

“a massive two fingers to the world of suited, booted city slickers. too good to miss.”
- impro-junk 22/08/10

“better than a lot of stuff you have to pay for. very clever, very funny, with excellent timing.”
-mark duqueno 24/08/10

“very slick and humourous.”
- matthew somerville 24/08/10

“original and excellent.” 5-stars
- online audience review 27/08/10

“i thought this was a fantastic show, especially as it's free. a clever script, slick and endearing performances and incredibly creative use of technical wizardry all make for a very funny and very entertaining show.” 5-stars
- online audience review 27/08/10

of course, i'm only bitter because it was a bad review. i wouldn't have to've spent the last hour collating all those nice things people said into one place if Georgina Evendon (a student reviewer who only likes Dance and Glee shows and simply has to keep mentioning Italia Conti in much of her work, and even if a show is "occasionally stale" or "verges on the pretentious" she'll give it 4/5 if it's dance) had written "this was very slick, inventive and must've taken ages to produce and rehearse due to all the incredibly difficult technical aspects of the piece. audience members around me were commenting on how close the parody of a terrible place to work is, compared to their own working environment. impressive and dedicated work, 4-stars"...

it's okay, georgina. it's okay that you've only just left university and have no experience of anything referred to in my show. you're only a child, you've never had to do a days work for an arsehole. it's okay that your writing hasn't reached a level of maturity that makes it credible in the public world. you will learn. yes, your review currently says "i didn't like it, then i thought it was good, but i didn't like it." and you released it - pointlessly - three weeks after the thing finished, but don't let that stop you pursuing your dream. this country celebrates mediocrity so you'll fit right in.

i'll rise above the negativity and carry on receiving up-beat commentary, and georgina can work her arse off (100 words a day) to finally get a badly paid job at the daily mail where some coked-up bigot can attempt to moisten her dried up vagina facility.