SCRIMP: SAVE YOUR MONEY TO SEE ONLY THE BEST SHOWS BY READING PROFESSIONAL AND AUDIENCE REVIEWS.
With Victoria Fringe Festival performers running 60 different shows in 17 venues, you may feel overwhelmed this week. Which shows should I try to see? How do I know the good from the bad?
Fortunately, Victoria has four excellent sources of insider information to help guide you. Five, if you count the entertaining Fringe program itself, which contains some very good information as well.
1. Times Colonist newpaper reviews: See an alphabetical index of all reviews here. This fabulous resource lists all shows alphabetically for easy searching. Arts writers Adrian Chamberlain and Thandi Fletcher review shows nightly and the web page is updated with fresh links to those new reviews. All shows are given a star rating to help you comparison shop.
2. Monday Magazine reviews: See A-F reviews here. See G-M here. See O-Z here. You have to work a little harder to find the specific show review you’re seeking, but Monday has more staff and freelance reviewers on the job than the T-C, so they should be able to cover the festival more completely. All shows are star-rated for easy comparison.
3. The Craig audience reviews: See reviews arranged alphabetically here. The Craig website harnesses the power of the people to deliver a wide range of opinions on Fringe shows. What the “real folks” like as opposed to the paid critical reviewers can be very interesting indeed. The neat thing here is you can get multiple reviews of the same show and make up your own mind about which you agree with.
4. Twitter mini reviews: If you are a Twitter user, go to the Twitter search page and enter the hash tag #yyjfringe That will bring up any and all recent posts related to the Victoria Fringe Festival, including late-breaking Fringe news, links to reviews, and much more. To see the results of a fun contest that invites Twitter users to post three-word reviews of Victoria Fringe shows, search the hash tag #yyjfringe together with the hash tag #ThreeWordReview
5. The Fringe program: Download a copy of the program here. In the individual show write-ups, performers often include snippets of media reviews from other cities where they have performed previously. These can provide a quick “thermometer reading” on how hot the show was at prior Fringe fests.
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