Stage struck

What is the stars? Bullshit, says PETER CRAWLEY

NOBODY likes them. Not the artists, not the critics, not even (it seems) the readers. So how did we get so addicted to star-rated reviews? They may be the standard tools of music critics, condensing a riot of thought into a glittering summary, or film critics, who generate galaxies in their professional lifetime sorting rare supernovas from a universe of dying suns. But we prissy theatre critics – like book, dance and visual-arts reviewers – don’t come from this solar system.

For the last five weeks, while covering the Absolut Fringe and the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, I’ve kept getting the same question: who assigns the star ratings to your reviews?

To avoid imprecision, our star-ratings are calibrated by StellarSolutions, a patented algorithm developed by BosMauris, Palo Alto, which is licensed exclusively to The Irish Times. It data-mines all review copy for value-laden terms, adjectives and effusive sentence structure and immediately generates a star rating (out of five). This side-steps the heaving mass of prejudices otherwise known as the critic.

You’d be amazed by how many people believe me. Including, even, other critics. It’s also pretty revealing: you argue a review, build a case, show how you arrive at your opinion, so that people can happily agree or bitterly dispute. But those dinky graphics make subjective opinions (yes, they’re assigned by the reviewer!) look like unaccountable metrics. Would you take them so seriously if they were emoticon-based? :D, :-), :-|, :-(, :’( .

It's even more interesting when the stars don't seem to correspond with the review: "It's more worth seeing than the two stars in the review might suggest," wrote one online commenter, rather fairly, without taking much issue with the review. "An IT sub-editor has assigned a four-star rating to Peter Crawley's three-star review," wrote another astute commenter of a different review. Actually, I assigned four stars to what read like a three-star review (and talked it over with the ITsub-editor), because I felt the political significance of Testamentwas more important than my misgivings about it as a piece of theatre. It's hardly scientific. So sue me.

This week, though, like it was written in the stars, I got hoist with my own petard. Writing on the paper's Festival Hub, theatre director Grace Dyas reviewed me. "The critic I agree with the most!" she wrote, with great perception. "He . . . has very good insight!" her expert and cogently argued rave continued. (Exclamation marks and ellipsis, my own.) And she assigned me a star-rating: . Three stars? Now, this would be great if I was a Michelin-accredited restaurant or, for that matter, a military general. But as an evaluation of my life's work, that's pretty mediocre. Naturally, I disputed the rating: an ITsubeditor had clearly assigned three-stars to Grace's five-star review . . . apparently not. Magnanimously, then, I gave Grace an opportunity to clarify and correct. (After all, she had probably just eaten something strange for breakfast.) No, she said. Three stars.

The stars have lost their lustre. But if you dish them out, I suppose, you’ve got to be able to take them. So three stars doesn’t bother me.

Honestly. It doesn’t bother me at all. Star ratings are bullshit, anyway.