The Weight of Stars
I have a lot to say about reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe—so much, in fact, that I’m splitting this into three posts:
Getting reviewed as a performer
Being a reviewer
Awards
This post is about being reviewed.
When I brought my first show, The Balls of Philadelphia, to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2024, everyone around me was panicking about reviews. Prior to the festival, the Fringe Society hosted a Zoom meeting on how to get them. I went, listened, and still didn’t understand the hysteria.
So someone has an opinion about your work and posts it online—why should that matter?
Then I started wondering if I was missing something. Maybe I should be worried. Maybe I should look into why I wasn’t worried.
The PR Maze
The standard way to get reviewed is to do PR—either yourself or through a rep. I looked into hiring someone and the going rate was upwards of $2,500. I interviewed one guy who seemed well-meaning but inept. If it took him a week just to reply to my emails, I couldn’t imagine him chasing down reviewers efficiently.
Doing PR myself didn’t sound any better. A couple months before the festival, the Fringe Society sends out a list of accredited reviewers—hundreds of them. You’re supposed to research each one, figure out who covers your genre, and send personalized emails pitching your show. Most of them will never reply, because they’re drowning in hundreds of similar emails daily.
It sounded maddening, and I didn’t feel like I needed reviews. So I did zero PR.
And then… reviewers started showing up anyway.
The Chaos of Being Seen
The first time I ever performed the show, a reviewer was in the audience. I didn’t realize it until two days later when I figured out how to check my ticketing dashboard.
That night, I completely fucked up the performance. I skipped eight minutes of material, realized mid-show that nothing made sense, told the audience I’d messed up, went back to redo the missing section, and somehow still finished twelve minutes early. I must have bulldozed through everything else.
She still gave me three stars.
A few days later, another reviewer came and loved it. Couldn’t stop talking about it all festival. Then someone from the Edinburgh Comedy Awards showed up and laughed through the whole thing. I never heard a word after that. Then a different reviewer gave it four stars and wrote a one-sentence review. Like—thank you? But what the hell am I supposed to do with that? No true professional will take that seriously.
The Meaning of Being Reviewed
Other performers were livid.
“I’ve been performing here for years—no one’s ever reviewed me!”
“I’ve been emailing reviewers for months and can’t get a single one to come!”
It made me wonder why it meant so much to people.
The logic went like this: If your show gets reviewed, it means it exists. A review is proof that you were here, that your work mattered enough for someone to write about it. And if it’s a good review, maybe it even sells tickets.
Except—spoiler—it usually doesn’t.
I didn’t pay for PR. I didn’t beg anyone to come. Three reviewers and one awards scout showed up anyway.
And that’s when I realized: no one, not even the reviewers, fully understands what reviews are for anymore.
Validation and Future-Scaping
My take: reviews are about present validation and future-scaping.
If you get a good review, it validates that you did good work. But unless it’s from a top-tier publication like The Guardian or The Scotsman, it probably won’t move tickets.
What it can do is help later: you can quote it in your press kit, use it to book other festivals, or include it in grant applications.
Personally, I didn’t need the validation. In some ways, my show was out in left field. I knew it was good for what it was, but also that different audiences would respond differently. A glowing review meant I’d reached my target demographic; a lukewarm one meant that reviewer probably wasn’t connecting, and that’s okay.
But what I don’t like—and what feels quietly tragic about this system—is how much these outside opinions can shape your future.
You can be self-assured, grounded, and proud of your work. But at the Fringe, someone else’s three stars can determine whether your next opportunity ever happens. And I just don’t think it should work that way.
After all that, I wanted to understand who these people were—the ones whose opinions could quietly tilt an artist’s future.
So the next year, I became one of them.
I got the press pass, a notebook, and a front-row seat to the strange machinery of power that keeps the Fringe spinning.
More on that in next week’s post.
