The team behind a Cambridge show has spent weeks planning, designing, publicising, tweaking, brain-storming and rehearsing incessantly. It’s consumed a large chunk of their waking attention for a very long time. Reviewers, on the other hand, need only send an email and rock up in the foyer at 7.15 on opening night to collect their free tickets. They can sit through a play, crank out a few hundred words on their laptop, and be done in time for Cindies that same evening.

Unsurprisingly, thespians feel there is a mismatch of talent. While Cambridge is teeming with top-notch actors, top-notch reviewers are as rare as hen’s teeth. There’s a sensible reason for this – journalism is simply not considered as big a deal as acting here. Nobody expects writers to dedicate their student years to getting better at writing in the same way as actors dedicate themselves to getting better at acting. To make things worse, the people who actually could write intelligently and passionately about student drama tend to be involved in it themselves.

Even when writers are talented, engaged and informed, it’s unclear what a ‘fair’ review would even look like. Should we offer a ‘fair’ account of our own subjective feelings, or a ‘fair’ representation of the audience’s response as a whole, or a review that is ‘fair’ in that it fulfils the expectations of the actors? It’s not always possible to fulfil these contradictory aims in one article. Most reviewers aim to provoke discussion and thought, hopefully to encourage people to attend the show and make their own minds up. But the actual cast and directors will read the review more closely than anybody else, and they’ll be looking for feedback. Ideally, for positive feedback.

I love writing about drama, and I try to be as reasonable and empathetic as possible. But you’ve got to squeeze a huge range of ideas into a tight word limit. You don’t have the space to single out every individual involved in the show and praise them, even if you’d really like to do so. Sometimes even major characters will barely get a name-check, and techies can be all but forgotten.

For a range of more dubious reasons, writers may not always give positive feedback, even if the play is very good indeed. This could be because standards are incredibly high in Cambridge, because a particular show fails to live up to the hype, or simply because the reviewer wants to show off their own cleverness (rarely attractive, but it happens). If you need consolation, just remember that pretty much every show in Cambridge is really high-quality indeed; if you’ve performed at the ADC or the Playroom you’re probably pretty damn good anyway, and shouldn’t need a review to tell you that.

Can theatre writers do anything to make reviews ‘fairer’? Well, perhaps they could include brief quotes from multiple audience members. CUTV’s Review Show is excellent in this respect.

Secondly, we should revive the discussion about ratings: are they really appropriate? Is it ‘fair’ when you’ve got a large team of occasional reviewers applying totally different standards from show to show? Last week in Varsity, Rivkah Brown gave three stars to “pretty darn hilarious” Phil Wang and Jonny Lennard. Meanwhile, Imogen Sebba gave four stars to Welcome Break, despite finding some of it “jarring” and “problematic.” Both are great reviewers, but there’s clearly an issue of consistency here. Star ratings force people to reduce a show to one crude number.

In conclusion: a plea to thesps. Hard as it may be to forget even the smallest faults mentioned in a review, avoid treating them as authoritative. A reviewer may know little about theatre, having volunteered for one review to expand his CV. Another will take it for granted that a sell-out ADC mainshow is brilliant, and choose to use her articles to muse on what could have been even better. Sometimes a subtle and nuanced review is hacked to pieces by a sub-editor to save space.

Don’t expect too much of reviewers. We’re just ordinary members of the audience – albeit with loud voices.

Read a couple of responses here. Do you think Cambridge theatre reviewing is fair? Comment below or write to us at theatre@varsity.co.uk – selected emails and comments may be published.