Andrew Kay: Brighton Restival

Phew! It’s over for another year, the main Brighton Festival that is, we still have another week of Brighton Fringe to go but some extent the pressure is off. ‘Pressure?’ I hear you say, ‘What pressure?’, and this I can understand

“I love it, I love my job – but therein lies the key. It is a job”

Working on a magazine as a critic certainly has a very lovely up side. In my job I have been privileged to see so many fabulous things, foreign travel, great food and excellent arts – from skating spectaculars to the truly weird and wonderful. I love it, I love my job – but therein lies the key. It is a job.

With every invitation, every press ticket, comes an obligation to give the event careful consideration, assessment and to report as and when it is appropriate.

I often laugh when people tell me about walking out of shows that they are not enjoying. That is a luxury not afforded to me. The remit is to sit through till the end or what is sometimes the bitter end. It happens, there are times when I would dearly like to put on my hat and coat and walk out – but I don’t. It’s part of the price I pay for attending things for free, that and writing things up after the event.

So when you take all that into account (and some of the team here at Latest will see at least one show a day for the full month of May and often more) the term job becomes more apparent and occasionally less attractive.

There is always the added pressure of time, the reviews have to be filed by 10am the following day, which means staying up late or getting up early. I’m an early bird anyway so I often write my reviews having slept on it. It clears my mind of any instantaneous bile that might rise and surface through my keyboard – which is a good thing I suppose. Although from time to time I wake up still angry at having given my time to something that really should never have got beyond a drunken chat in a bar.
Funnily enough, and despite often disliking something I have see, I am still filled with admiration for not only the people who step out on that stage but also for the people behind the scenes and in particular the brave Festival and Fringe programmers who bring the whole thing together. I’m sure that it can’t be that easy putting your head on the block so many times in the short time that the Festival occupies, and especially as so much of it is years in the planning. It’s little wonder that from time to time I see people dipping out of sight as they see me approach, especially after sitting through something that is clearly not awfully good, just awful.

So with my hand on my heart I say congratulations to the writers, performers and artists, to the people backstage, to the designers and publicists, to the venue managers and to the Festival and Fringe programmers. Without them all Brighton would be a far less exciting place to live and May a dull old month.

I would also like to apologise if any of my reviews have caused offence or distress. I do my best to be kind, and on the whole I am pretty generous. This year I have seen so much that is good and a little that really didn’t do it for me. It would be wrong to sugar the pill for those and after all it is only my opinion. I often disagree with other reviewers but that is what makes it such an interesting job. And when I say disagree I do not mean that I think they are wrong, far from it, they simply have a different opinion or response to the things we see.

For now though it’s time to go back to seeing two or three things a week and not being out every day and night in the fury and flurry that is Brighton Festival and Brighton Fringe. I love it and hope that it continues to attract such a diverse programme of arts and entertainment, I only wish that the weather was kinder and that we could sit out after the shows in beautiful Old Steine where this year the late spring has meant that the flowers look stunning. Ah well, you can’t have everything.