Roxane Hudon (THE SKINNY)
Roxane Hudon isn’t a terrible reviewer, but she does possess some annoying tics that become more so as you read through her canon. By the end of it you feel you’ve pulled on a sandpaper vest.
For one thing, Hudon seems tied up with her own preconceptions and determined to bore us with what they were. “I admit that my first thought was ‘please don’t make this another show about how tough it is to be an ageing single woman’,” she says of Catherine Semark, adding that she “initially feared female clichés”, presumably because Semark is, um, a woman. How helpful it is to have the likes of Hudon on the side of the comedy sisterhood.
Watching the Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolf III she opines: “Unless you’re incredibly uptight and/or an actual Christian, I don’t see how you can not have a great time here,” as if by ‘Christian’ she’s saying ‘alien’ or ‘pixie’. An ACTUAL Christian? Has anyone really ever seen one? Elsewhere she states “It’s too bad that comedians going ‘outside the box,’ are still considered ‘alternative.’” This comment seemed disconnected from the review built around it and I’m still trying hard to work out what it means. Her punctuation, incidentally, is all over the shop.
She does appreciate, and give an enjoyable account of, Michael J Dolan however, accounting for a low turnout and praising his efforts nonetheless. However, we learn more than we need to when she reveals: “Maybe I’m also dead inside, because his thoughts on such pleasant topics as awful relationships, our eventual madness, and suicide have me laughing in agreement.”
Hudon makes some helpful points and her ratings seem fair for how much she enjoyed herself. Although I’m not sure many people would want the challenge of getting Hudon to enjoy herself. And I wonder, out of concern more than anything, whether Hudon should do something cheerier than sit in dark rooms assessing people.
Becky Walker’s Panda