This one feels surprisingly impersonal, despite me being one of those detestable hacks to have previously awarded Andrew Doherty his uncoveted three stars and to be doing so again. I find his one-man, shlocky horror tales amusing enough in their overblown campery. But also quite unsophisticated, formulaic and shallow at a festival that has launched such genre-soaked, brilliantly written and performed phenomena as The League of Gentlemen and Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.
Taking as read Doherty’s assertion that all professional critics are friendless, clueless, cocaine-hoovering nepo babies, so overly sensitive to the slightest criticism of themselves that they’ll tear an artist a new arsehole in a review like this to make themselves feel anything in their loveless hearts, the plot of Reviewers Welcome is the standard stranger lured to a mysterious place by their greed, entirely unprepared for what awaits them story.
Waggishly, Doherty inserts himself into the tale as a playwright of renown, a God amongst scribbler worms, and gets metatheatrically incestuous. But like his wretched anti-hero confronted by genius, I felt it was only fine. Even as the overwhelmingly majority of the crowd roared in laughter. So maybe it’s devastating satire.
Andrew Doherty: Reviewers Welcome… TO DIE!, Pleasance, until 30 August, 10:50pm