Reviews

Ed Reardon: A Writer’s Burden

Editorial Staff

It wasn’t until I arrived in Edinburgh that I realised the BBC has set up camp with its own venue this year, providing unneccessary peak time competition when it should be covering acts in their own environments. And while Ed Reardon: A Writer’s Burden is playing over at the Pleasance, not in Potterow, the decision to bring this popular BBC sit-com to the Fringe also seems surplus to requirements.

Veteran of seven Radio 4 series, Reardon is the archetypal pedant-curmudgeon, a jobbing writer fallen on slim pickings who spends more time pointing out his pet peeves, grammatical or otherwise, than writing. Pleasant to see Christopher Douglas in person, performing a pithy script with the ease born of total familiarity with his character. Reardon pours his usual scorn on everyone from David Hare and the Arts Council to his youthful nemeses, be they fellow fringe performers or BBC commissioners.

It’s all good fun but Reardon’s sarcastic take on proceedings wears thin – and too close to the bone. No one has to be here, least of all the audience. And despite two hard-working support actors (playing two hard-working support actors), there isn’t quite enough flesh added to truly (the horrors of a split infinitive!) justify Reardon’s transfer to the ‘s-apostrophe-tage’.