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Cabaret Whore‘s Sarah-Louise Young Decides Not to Read Her Reviews

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31 July 2011

I’ve just been asked
whether I want to read my reviews during the Edinburgh festival. As someone who
has always produced their own work, this is a novel concept. It was with great
delight that I said no. Which is not to say that reviews are not important. On
the contrary, a good write up in The Scotsman can make a show and a bad review
can put folk off.

There is usually a mad
frantic rush on Blu-tack and other stationery goods over the month of August as
performers race to get stars and quotes attached to their flyers and out into
the hands of potential punters as soon as possible. I’ve seen fights break out over guillotines and glue guns. There’s
also a new influx of people arriving daily so there’s always an opportunity to
re-sell your show. Hopefully the bad reviews get buried and the good ones get
plastered across the city.

My choice to focus on
the work and not what people think about it doesn’t mean that I don’t
care. I do, very much, but it’s
the audience’s opinion that matters the most in Edinburgh. The first year I took my Cabaret Whore
show to the festival it was in the Free Fringe and word of mouth meant we went
from 34 people on day one to 60 on day two and standing room only for the rest
of the run. We had one favourable online review out in the first week but then
nothing until the end of the run, by which time even critics had to fight for a
seat. Tourists talk, and if they think they’ve seen something special they’ll
tell their friends and strangers alike.

The Edinburgh Fringe
website even has a place for people to rate the shows they have seen and more
than anywhere else, Edinburgh is a festival where the public decide what’s good
and what isn’t.

There are far too
many shows for reviewers to see everything and they do their best, often seeing
five or six shows in a 24 hour period. So companies holding out for a review don’t lose heart: you can sell
your show through word of mouth, intelligent flyering and staying positive.

So here I am on the
paid fringe for the first time with my solo work and it’s fantastic to have the
opportunity to say “No thank you, I don’t want to read my reviews, good or bad”
(and I’ve seen some people’s show ruined by actors believing the good ones). I
hope the critics come, I hope they like the show and I hope I don’t hear about
it until the very end, when I shall sit down with all the reviews and a large
bottle of wine, knowing that it’s too late to do anything about it. In the
meantime I will be listening to my audiences and shaping the show around their
feedback. After all, they are the reason I am there.

Cabaret Whore More! More! More! 4 to 29 August (not 17) 16.55 (1 hr) Underbelly