Reflections on reviewing

A labour of love, and sometimes frustration

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

Disclaimer: If I sound self-absorbed, it’s because I can only speak for myself :)

Being a theatre reviewer is an enormous privilege but it’s also incredibly precarious. There are so few paid opportunities, practically no staff jobs, and no safety net for freelancers. A new editor might take over and ghost you after seven years’ loyal service. When Musicals (where I had no financial safeguard due to my freelance agreement) closed, I lost much of my income and any ‘status’ I might have had. And I would never review musicals (at least, not the bigger ones) again – they’re the assignments that almost everyone wants and there are lots of people ahead of me on the other outlets to which I contribute.

I started reviewing in 2010 (I emphasise that I was one of the very youngest reviewers on the scene at that time). It was incredibly exciting getting press tickets and seeing my work published online. I remember fairly early on overhearing a PR saying, ‘We have Michael Billington here, and Michael Coveney and Fiona Mountford… and Julia Rank’, as if I was their equal. However, paid opportunities proved elusive. I was happy for my peers when they progressed to the likes of The Stage, Time Out and various newspapers, but I also wanted a bit of that for myself. I was on the verge of chucking it all in (the tickets were no longer incentive enough) when I got my first paid opportunity in 2016. The fee of £25 (and no travel expenses) wasn’t exactly lavish but it was life changing as any kind of payment was exponentially more than I’d had before and felt like confirmation that I was more than an admin drudge.

Commissioning tends to be very hierarchical and I tried so hard to be scrupulously fair when allocating reviews for Musicals, knowing how frustrating politics and pecking orders can be. I don’t doubt I wasn’t perfect but I really did my best. It was also the first time that I had the freedom to choose things for myself, which was an extraordinary luxury, but I don’t think I was greedy.

Having waited such a long time to get paid for reviewing, I had mixed feelings about doing such work for free again. However, I’m very grateful to have the chance to do a few bits for my wonderful friend and former colleague Lisa’s website Musical Theatre Review, which truly is a labour of love. What I won’t do is contribute to websites that are clearly profit-making but don’t pay their writers.

And I’ve been reviewing here under my own umbrella. I don’t feel entitled to anything and am ever so ‘umble (though hopefully not Uriah Heep-ishly so) whenever I ask to be considered for a ticket. I’m not quite sure what it takes for one to be considered ‘established’ or ‘respected’ in this line of work. I’ve been doing it for a long time; I’m a member of the Critics’ Circle; I’ve been Assistant Editor of a glossy specialist magazine, and, although I know that not everyone is going to like me or my writing, I think my peers and PRs generally think I’m OK.

However, I’ve never been in a newspaper; I’m not a ‘name’, and I don’t have many social media followers. What I can do is write quite well and I put the work in. I just hope that these pieces are seen as showing initiative, rather than ‘regressing’ to ‘amateur’ status just because they’re self-published. I put the same amount of effort into them. If anything, I work harder as I don’t have another pair of eyes for the editing (all typos and overlong sentences are my own).

Please, sir. I want some more. Photo: Johan Persson

If I may rant a bit, it must be said that not everyone who is lucky enough to receive press tickets pulls their weight equally. In fact, it can feel grossly imbalanced. At the interval of a recent show, my neighbour proudly/smugly informed me about his partner, ‘She’s a reviewer, you know!’ I asked for which outlet. The answer was Instagram. I had my notebook and pen to hand but they didn’t ask anything about my own efforts. I made a note of her account name and, over a week later, she still hasn’t posted anything.

Plus, in a recent ‘Ahead of the show tonight’ welcome email, the PR had to specify that, for people who review on social media, an Instagram ‘story’ isn’t sufficient (though of course welcome as an extra!) and a ‘permanent’ review in the form of a post or reel is required – and it needs to be more than one line. All my reviewer friends/acquaintances and I work so hard to produce engaging, well-thought-out pieces at tight deadlines whether it’s a paid or unpaid commission, and it really is frustrating seeing freeloaders, who haven’t even got large social media platforms, getting the same opportunities.

With paid assignments, you don’t want to turn anything down, even if it isn’t something that sounds particularly appealing on paper (of course, I always keep an open mind). I like to think of the reviews here as a ‘curated’ selection, as I only ask for things that I truly want to see (I knew that Burlesque wouldn’t be my thing even without all the controversy). I admire people who have day jobs and review every night but that would make me burn out very quickly. I also hope that everyone in Edinburgh for the Fringe is having a lovely time but I’ve never done it and honestly have little FOMO.

While musicals will remain the focus of this Substack, I am thinking about expanding to review some plays as well, if PRs will have me. I’ve also taken the liberty of turning on the option of paid subscriptions. I have no expectations but there can’t be any harm in doing so. Forget coffee, £3.50 represents two bus fares, which is much more important to me (I’m a millennial who isn’t obsessed with coffee and yet…).