For your entertainment, three Exeunt writers reveal the hidden meanings behind the shorthands that theatre critics fall back on.

Putting your experience of a show into words is a messy business. A mass of feelings and memories and criticisms has to be poured into the modest vessel of a theatre review, and a lot gets spilled. Critics often fall back on neat phrases to gesture at flaws they’re reluctant to spell out, or to wave impotently at a whole mass of ideas that would take a PhD thesis to explore. For your entertainment, three Exeunt writers are here to crack the code, and reveal the true meanings behind some of the shorthands that critics fall back on when deadlines, wordcounts and writers’ block bite.

“evocative” – it made me feel things, but they are either too personal or too nebulous to reveal, and I’m too lazy to interrogate them further (Fergus Morgan)

“atmospheric” – I know I was meant to feel something but I was also thinking about chips (Francesca Peschier)

“enigmatic/gnomic/impenetrable” – I had absolutely no idea what was going on, and am currently having an existential crisis centred on my unsuitability for a career in theatre criticism (Alice Saville)



“in the era of #MeToo” – it had women in it and the reviewer is a lazy fucking bastard (FP)

“iffy” – completely fucking inappropriate (FM)

“problematic” – why oh why did they write this in the year of two thousand and eighteen (AS)

“dated gender politics” – I wanted to take out every single male cast member with well-aimed copes of SCUM Manifesto (AS)

“anarchic” – they threw stuff at us then implied we were all awful people for paying £15 to come watch them in a theatre, when clearly we should be out blowing up a bank or something (FP) “meta-theatrical” – wait, so it’s theatre, that knows it’s theatre? My brain is melting… (AS) “on-the-nose political references” – there was almost certainly someone wearing a Trump wig (AS)



“gig theatre” – there was singing with stand up microphones but not that much dancing, and this reviewer feels it was a bit too cool to call it a musical (FP)

