Laura Kidd (THREE WEEKS)
Laura Kidd is alright at reviewing, I suppose. She seems to get the measure of Lewis Schaeffer, saying “it takes almost the full 50 minutes of his show to start liking him”. That’s when other reviewers go off him, so it sounds like she saw a good one. And four stars is generous (in a good way) for a show where she warmed to the comic only during his closing statement.
She does her best with a tiny word limit to describe Matt Roper’s Wilfredo character, although she does grate with her “my quest” style of writing: “From the moment I enter what could be the rankest-smelling Fringe venue…” Keep yourself out the picture, please. You going to someone’s show is not a thrilling adventure for the rest of us.
I was also aggrieved at her needling of Tom Goodliffe for having a routine about liking tits. “Amongst the gentle enthusiasm, a jarring section on how much he loved ‘boobies’ as a young man leads to a much-needed denouncement of The Sun’s Page three and the misogyny and violence prevalent in hip hop,” she says. Good job he put that denouncement in, eh? Otherwise he’d be no better than a RAPIST. Liking ‘boobies’, indeed! And well done for quarantining the word ‘boobies’ inside some inverted commas, otherwise we’d all have caught rapism! For fuck’s sake. Let the boy talk about boobies if he wants to. Boobies, boobies, boobies. I love boobies and I’m made of cloth. Boobies are great. Yummy lovely sexy boobies. Did any feminists die, Kidd? No. Is Emily Davison spinning in her grave? No, she’s fine with it. She probably loved them too.
To be honest, there’s a bigger issue at stake here. Laura Kidd has a full and interesting life outside reviewing. She performs Britpop songs on a ukulele under the name She Makes War. She goes for long walks and writes blogs, such as the most recent one which read “[I] am treating this whole trip as an artistically enriching adventure. I love seeing how other people perform their material, hearing the things they choose to share with a room full of strangers and especially witnessing the clever ways they get their stories across”, adding “I need my own 50 minute Fringe show next year”.
So… What are you DOING, Laura? We see so many young reviewers at Fringepig, and some of them we can do nothing for. They’re reviewing because they just can’t think of anything else to do. I blame the government. They have no purpose of their own, Laura, so they attempt to piggyback on the talents of others. But look at you, Laura. You’ve got it all going on. You’ve told us how much you love performance. You seem to understand just how delicate a thing it is. But then you go home and you start processing it, like spam or cheap soup or offal sausages. People like you with your little clattery keyboards, Laura, processing ART into 120 words of “meh”.
STOP IT. Save yourself. Go home, Laura. Write that Fringe show. And come back next year as someone with a proper contribution to make.
Michaela Plaidface