Andrew Haydon kindly commends me for my director's eye view on this year's Festival. That's very nice of him, but unfortunately that's not really what I'm doing. I've a couple of posts brewing on the different processes of keeping my two shows pinging away at full power - or trying to. But I'm not going to post them. I'm a slightly different director for every actor, which makes me six different directors at this Festival. That's a pretty delicate balance to strike, and posting on it in public and in detail would only make my job harder. Maybe when the dust has settled...

So instead, I'm going to engage in the time-honoured tradition of whinging about the critics. We've had some lovely reviews for both shows, but they really mean not a jot. Let me tell you why.

The top review for either is probably this lovely one from the Scotsman. Of course, we were very pleased, especially when we learned that the estimable Sally J Stott had further honoured us with a Fringe First nomination (which, unless Joyce McMillan has the best poker face in the business, we won't win). But already the clues were there. For a start, she gets my name totally wrong despite it being quite clearly written in the programme. Then comes her final sentence: "if you only feel you can cope with one show on torture and terrorism this festival season, this is probably going to be the funniest." Well, if you only see one, it certainly will be the funniest. These are tiny quibbles, perhaps, but along with a few other clunky sentences and a lack of any sort of penetration beneath the surface (it's not a difficult show to penetrate), one starts to lose trust.

Then came her review of Man Across the Way. Having swapped around characters and events in the plot recitation that dominates the review, she concludes that the play "ends cryptically". Certainly it does: if you aren't paying enough attention to get the character names the right way around, then teasing out ambiguities won't be your cup of tea. Then one backtracks this even more egregious lack of penetration to the Can of Worms review, and loses what little trust one had.

Let me get this straight: I don't at all mind having bad reviews. I've had much, much worse reviews than this humdrum three-starring (Can of Worms has had worse this festival, of which more soon) and I've even agreed with some of them. What I mind is presenting my work for assessment to someone who's not up to the job. Every audience response is valid, and she's not the first to find the play a bit too elusive to grasp. But it would be nice to be reviewed by someone for whom it's not such a strain. Should our reviewers be a member of the audience picked at random? Or should they qualify for their authority status with a minimum level of knowledge, penetration and ability to articulate those qualities?

Our best review for Man Across the Way came from the Metro, for whom we're also Pick of the Day today. And gratifyingly, he seems to have got it. So why do I also not trust that review?

I wasn't looking forward to seeing the Metro review. As a director I may be absurdly critical of my own work and certainly I'm rarely completely satisfied. But that show was the worst we've had. It was the day before everything clicked into place and the actors got a sense of the space and the tech and how everything fitted together. That day, it was low-key, it dragged and the audience shuffled. So did the guy from the Metro, who was sitting in front of me. So I'm glad he was nice about the show - and certainly, he was right to not really say anything at all about the production, if he was so determined to make a good show out of it - but it doesn't gratify me as a review does when it's earned.

And his review of Can of Worms was a real stinker. This doesn't invalidate his response to Man Across the Way (if it needs invalidating), but whereas Sally J Stott failed to engage with Man Across the Way, Christopher Collett flat refuses to even accept the premise of Can of Worms. Given that the press release promises a show that clowns around the subject of torture, surely they should have sent a reviewer who was, at the very least, prepared to engage with that? The first paragraph could have been written before he even saw the show.

Again, I don't mind that he didn't like the show - we knew some people would take against it, and we knew some of them would have pens - but it's a little galling, for example, that he doesn't even address whether or not it's funny. As it happens, the day he was there, there were gales of whole-audience belly laughter and I would have counted that performance a success. No audience is totally unanimous and I'm keen to hear from people who don't like the show. If they've something constructive to add.

Perhaps having intuited my irritation on this point, in his latest review, of Cal McCrystal's Callate! at the Assembly Rooms, he graciously acknowledges that "a section of the audience was clearly enjoying itself" before concluding that "it was hard to see what was so funny". Bullshit. It's your job to figure out what was so funny. And if you don't agree with those who thought it was funny, it's your job to figure out why, and to articulate that.

As I've perhaps neglected to say on these pages before, I'm as happy with both shows as I've ever been with anything, and it's exciting to run two such utterly different shows back-to-back. Like Chris Goode, who's been much more badly-done by than me this year, I feel I deserve a bit more effort at engagement on the part of my critics. It's also frustrating that people keep sending the same reviewer to both shows, when they've only any interest in one sort of show. Surely people should be sent to see the sort of work they like, so they can assess it on its own terms, rather than attacking the terms?

We've a reviewer from The List coming to both shows today. I wonder which one she'll like?

POSTSCRIPT - I'd be interested to know if there's anyone on the planet apart from me who likes both shows. Announce yourselves! And if you liked one and not the other, I'd like to know why.

UPDATE - We've Lyn Gardner coming in to Man Across the Way in the next couple of days. I trust Lyn Gardner. Whether she likes it or not, I'll listen to what she has to say.

There, I've said it now.

AND ALSO - another two reviews for Can of Worms, one four star, one two star. There's something quite satisfying about splitting the critics...