Fringepig

Shiv Das (THREE WEEKS)

Oh for fuck’s fucking sake. Shiv Das gives five stars to almost everything. While it’s all well and good to enjoy your job, a good review doesn’t mean that the reviewer can just cut and paste the PR spiel, or excuse themselves from the niceties of critical analysis, punctuation and grammar. I’m sure no act has ever complained about getting a lazy five-star review, but if Three Weeks reviews held ANY currency whatsoever this sort of blunderbuss hackery undermines it entirely.

“The NHS wants your blood to feed the underworld of vampires!” – so begins his review of Vampire Hospital Waiting Room, as if we’re reading the flyer. Paco Erhardt is “a combination of Jim Jeffries and Bill Hicks”. Now, this monkey likes Paco Erhardt and would give him a clutch of stars any day of the week, but… he’s a combination of Paco Erhardt and Paco Erhardt.

Compare this to when Das dislikes something, such as Chastity Butterworth and the Spanish Hamster. He begins: “Firstly, the Spanish hamster only appears once, and very briefly. It’s not at all deserving of a place in the title.”

Das reminds me of General Melchett in Blackadder IV, complaining about the number of twits in The Three Twits. But it gets worse. Not only was Das cheated on a promise of comedy rodentia in this production, the whole damn thing was “inconveniently played in the afternoon”. How dare it? No wonder it only got one star. The stage adaptation of James Clavell’s King Rat would probably piss Das right off with its outrageous lack of ennobled vermin, especially if it clashed with his dinner.

Shiv Das claims in his biog to have “just completed an MA in journalism”. If this is true then his college, like Das, must be giving away accolades like condoms in a Brooke’s clinic.

Billy Coconuts