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New York Times
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In ‘Bring the House Down,' It's the Critic's Turn to Get Panned
BRING THE HOUSE DOWN, by Charlotte Runcie How cruel may a critic be? I ask for a friend. David Niven was once dismissed as 'tall, dark and not the slightest bit handsome.' (He hung the review in his bathroom.) John Simon described Barbra Streisand's nose in 'A Star Is Born' as 'a ziggurat made of meat' bisecting the screen like 'a bolt of fleshy lightning.' Having never gone further than calling an actor confused or miscast, I find such put-downs shocking. But they pale in comparison to Alex Lyons's review of Hayley Sinclair in a one-woman Edinburgh Festival Fringe production called 'Climate Emergence-She.' After disemboweling the script, Lyons turns his attention to its author and star. 'Hayley herself is so tedious, and so derivative,' he writes, 'that after you've endured the first 10 minutes of what the venue is loosely calling 'a show,' you'll be begging for the world to end much sooner than scheduled.' Should Lyons, the lead critic at a major British newspaper, be canceled for that? How about if, in the hours between writing the pan and its publication, he picks up Sinclair at a bar and sleeps with her? She reads her one-star review in the morning, not knowing until then that the man she spent the night with was its author. And does it change the moral calculus if Lyons was right? The show sounds truly dreadful. Those are the questions heating up Charlotte Runcie's debut novel, 'Bring the House Down,' which enjoyably pours fuel on both his and her sides of the dispute. Lyons is basically a #MeToo straw man, so grossly cavalier and indifferent to the sensitivity of other people, especially women, that you'd want to cancel him just for existing. Nor does Runcie make Sinclair a shining heroine. In a canny and commercial act of revenge, the character instantly revamps 'Climate Emergence-She' as 'The Alex Lyons Experience,' dredging up the history of the critic's indiscretions and releasing the monster of internet rage. With its parade of guest star exes and its bonus semi-nudity, the new show is the hit the old one could never be. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Fringe Festival critic gets his comeuppance in entertaining 'Bring the House Down'
Any profession can corrupt its practitioners — and arts critics are no exception. Are they enlightened standard-setters dragging us back from a cultural abyss — or deformed exiles from the arts who, with sharpened pens and bent backs, are ready to pounce on plot-holes and devour careers at a moment's notice? If Charlotte Runcie's debut novel, "Bring the House Down," is anything to go by, it's a bit of both. The book centers around four heady weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which begins the unraveling of two newspaper critics who have traveled up from London to cover the sprawling performance art event. Runcie, a former arts columnist for the Daily Telegraph, has created something so delightfully snackable that you may, as I did, gulp it down in two or three sittings. Runcie's anti-hero is theater critic Alex Lyons. Alex gives everything he reviews either one star or five, and the latter are vanishingly rare. He bemoans a world of 'online shopping reviews,' where 'five stars has come to mean the baseline, rather than outstanding,' and so insists on panning almost everything he sees. What's bad for artists is good for him: His reviews become desperately sought-after career makers or breakers. 'The paper didn't allow Alex to award zero stars. Otherwise, he'd do it all the time.' We learn about Alex's story through our narrator Sophie Ridgen, his colleague who, despite being in her mid-30s like Alex, is on a very different track. Alex rose quickly through the newspaper's ranks, and his reviews are featured on the front page almost daily. Sophie continues to toil as a junior culture writer, picking up whatever scraps nobody else wants. Sophie is also a new mom, overworking to compensate for time lost to maternity leave. She feels uncomfortable in her post-pregnancy body, exhausted and frustrated with her husband. Alex, on the other hand, finds it 'embarrassingly easy' to get laid. But Alex's glory days are numbered. Early on at the Fringe, he sees a one-woman show that, unsurprisingly, he hates. He writes a review as devastating as it is personal (calling the star a 'dull, hectoring frump,' her voice a 'high-pitched whine'). All of this would be business as usual for Alex except for one problem: After quickly filing his review of the show, he bumps into Hayley Sinclair, its creator and star, in a bar. He takes her home and sleeps with her. He knew the one star was waiting for her; she did not. When she finds out, there is hell to pay. Hayley transforms her nightly show into the 'Alex Lyons Experience,' collecting testimony from his ex-girlfriends and lovers, or even those who have simply received bad reviews from him. Over the following weeks her show swells into a Greek chorus of one man's wrongs. The whole nation, including members of Parliament, have hot takes (the performance is livestreamed). It doesn't help his case that Alex is a bit of a nepo baby, as his mother Judith is an actor whose name would be recognized in most British households. Sophie, living with Alex in the company-rented flat, has a front row seat to his public unraveling. She watches the livestreams with guilty awe, stalks Alex and Hayley compulsively online, and feverishly scans social media for the latest gossip (Runcie is great at writing a fake mean Tweet/X dispatch). She starts missing calls with her husband and their toddler son, as she becomes fully obsessed with the drama unfolding in Edinburgh. As she continues to inhabit the same flat as her colleague, Sophie is increasingly questioned by others as to whose side she's on, Alex or Hayley's. For much of the book, she seems unable to make up her mind. She refuses to give up on Alex, and increasingly becomes his only source of companionship, which she can't help but find flattering. But she also finds herself sympathetic to and magnetized by Hayley, whose popularity is blossoming on the Fringe circuit and beyond. Read more: 10 books to read in July While Alex and Hayley both appear to possess other-worldly levels of charisma, one flaw with Runcie's novel is that this is something we are repeatedly told, rather than shown. Alex spends most of the book being condescending to Sophie, and yet she is transfixed by him. 'He had the strange ability to make you feel as if you were the only person who was in on a joke, the only person who understood some fundamental truth about the world that escaped other people.' This feels unsatisfyingly generic, like something you might find in an online wedding vows template. We are at least given more backstory and a more plausible explanation for Sophie's fascination with Alex: the ego trip. Having been dragged down by motherhood, a rocky marriage, and grief over the death of her own mother, Sophie enjoys Alex's increasing dependence on her, a lone rock of support amid an ocean of alienation. There is something undeniably delicious in watching someone you revere fall to their knees, and Sophie begins to see in Alex 'a tiny flickering of fear, at first only visible as a barely perceptible interruption to his arrogance, like a power cut that dims the lights for just a hundredth of a second.' Read more: In defense of criticism: A theater critic asks what good does it do in an upside-down world Hayley, unfortunately, never quite comes to life in the same way. And it remains unclear why her show, which is essentially a litany of (legitimate) complaints about a real-life terrible man with some added pyrotechnics, takes Edinburgh and the entire country by such storm. 'I find I can't explain why it had the effect that it did,' Sophie tells us. 'This wasn't theater, not really; it was a happening. The audience weren't spectators anymore, but a silent, connected web of righteous energy.' Without more to go on, we have no choice but to take her word for it. The result feels like a missed opportunity to interrogate some important questions. How much does the identity (gender, race, or class) of the critic matter when it comes to their ability to judge art? What about the identity of the artist themselves? In other words, who shall criticize the critics? Readers may leave Runcie's novel feeling that some of these questions go unanswered, but this deeply entertaining novel is nonetheless well worth the price of admission. Mills is a writer and human rights researcher who has worked for Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press. She lives in New York. Get the latest book news, events and more in your inbox every Saturday. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Washington Post
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
An actor turns the tables on a brutal critic in ‘Bring the House Down'
In his 1878 travel book 'Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes,' Robert Louis Stevenson declared that his native city wouldn't appeal to everyone. 'For all who love shelter and the blessings of the sun, who hate dark weather and perpetual tilting against squalls, there could scarcely be found a more unhomely and harassing place of residence,' he wrote. In Charlotte Runcie's Edinburgh-set debut, the weather is the least of her characters' problems. For the man at the heart of the book — and at the center of a potentially reputation-destroying and career-ending furor — the Scottish capital proves to be 'unhomely and harassing' as a result of his reckless actions and ruthless words. 'Bring the House Down' plays out during the Edinburgh Fringe, the annual arts festival that comprises a dizzying range of actors, musicians, comedians and artists. Runcie, who is British, spent years as a journalist reviewing shows at the Fringe, and she channels her experience of the event in general and cutthroat criticism in particular in her accomplished novel. Alex Lyons, chief theater critic at a London newspaper, is a man of extremes who awards shows either five stars or, as is more often the case, one star. 'Anything in between was air.' At the Fringe, he writes a lacerating review of American performance artist Hayley Sinclair's first-ever one-woman show, 'Climate Emergence-She.' Later on, Alex meets Hayley at a bar and takes her back to his place for a one-night stand — while conveniently neglecting to mention his hatchet job, which has gone to press. When Hayley reads the review the next morning and discovers the man she slept with is its author, she fights back. Retitling her show 'The Alex Lyons Experience,' and repurposing it into an excoriating character assassination of the unscrupulous critic, Hayley immediately has a hit on her hands. As her story goes viral, her show expands to spotlight the widespread harm Alex has caused as both a critic and a philanderer, and to examine new ways of calling out and stamping out misogyny in the arts. Alex's colleague — and Runcie's narrator — Sophie Rigden looks on in awe as Hayley captivates her audience. 'It was like watching Botticelli's Venus come to life as a hipster enchantress,' she observes. 'She was essential, elemental, primordial with commanding rage.' While Hayley enjoys, and harnesses, her newfound fame, Alex crashes and burns. At one pivotal moment, it looks like it might be more than his career that goes up in smoke. Sophie tries to offer him support, but soon she is buckling under the weight of her own problems. Her workload multiplies when she takes over Alex's duties. Her emotional strain intensifies: She is mourning her mother, desperately missing her young son at home in London, wrestling with conflicting feelings for her previously unfaithful partner and weighing up the consequences of a drunken encounter. Can she regain control and come out on top like Hayley, or is she destined for disaster like Alex? This is a smart, sharp and compulsively readable first novel that provides food for thought on a variety of complex topics. A less skilled writer would have adopted a strident tone and resorted to speechifying during the passages that engage with themes such as male power and privilege, or publicity, notoriety and cancel culture. However, Runcie strikes a perfect balance, and instead of tub-thumping or finger-pointing, explores each issue with nuance and evenhandedness. She is especially insightful on both the criticism of art and the art of criticism. 'Personal recommendation has been replaced with consensus,' Sophie muses. 'We rely on there being hundreds of people rating everything, a critical mass of approval.' A novel isn't carried by its big ideas alone. It needs strong characters to convey them and react to them. Fortunately, Runcie's creations are forceful presences, all the more so because they are intriguingly multifaceted and resist cut-and-dried classification. Hayley is hell-bent on getting justice, yet there is more to her than a woman scorned or an avenging angel. Similarly, Alex has harsh judgments and selfish motives, and is given to 'tricking women into thinking he could give them what they wanted, only to maim them emotionally the moment they opened themselves up,' but he is no mere one-dimensional hate figure. Sandwiched between the two is Sophie, at once a 'sarcastic, sceptical, media-savvy hack girl with a flip answer to everything' and a sensitive young woman with divided loyalties who refuses to cast aspersions on either party. All of which sounds serious and thought-provoking. This is only partly true, for the novel is also fun and frequently witty. The dialogue sparkles. Alex's mother, acclaimed actress and 'national treasure' Dame Judith Lyons, steals scenes. Throughout, Runcie showcases the giddy whirl of the Fringe with its lively crowds, wild parties and madcap acts ('Hamlet' performed on a bouncy castle, confessions to the 'Chill Pope' conducted in portable toilets). Alex justifies his brutal takedowns by arguing that 'people like reading bad reviews.' They also like reading good books. 'Bring the House Down' is one such book: not a one-star flop but a five-star triumph. Malcolm Forbes is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and New Republic. By Charlotte Runcie Doubleday. 304 pp. $28
Irish Times
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
John Boyne on Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie: Toxic masculinity steals the show
Bring the House Down Author : The Borough Press ISBN-13 : 9780008688011 Publisher : Charlotte Runcie Guideline Price : £16.99 One of the most talked about television shows this year has been Netflix 's Adolescence . Toxic masculinity lay at the heart of that programme, albeit in the form of a 13-year-old boy. Charlotte Runcie's debut novel Bring the House Down explores similar territory, only with a character some 20 years older who is so oblivious to his mistreatment of women that its exposure seems as surprising to him as it is to everyone else. The premise is brilliant: Alex Lyons, a well-known theatre critic, reviews a one-woman show by Hayley Sinclair at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He hates it – to be fair, it does sound terrible – then goes to a bar where he writes an eviscerating, one-star review, files it with his editor for publication the next day, and then, by chance, runs into the performer . They chat and share a drink before going back to the flat he's sharing with a colleague, the novel's narrator Sophie, where they have sex. At no point does he tell her who he is or what he's done. The following morning Hayley reads the review and all hell breaks loose. [ Adolescence: Why can't we look away from Netflix's hypnotic hit? Opens in new window ] I don't want to give away exactly how Hayley wreaks her revenge, but suffice to say that the third chapter of this extraordinary book left me open-mouthed with a mixture of horror and laughter. From there, the book focuses on the remaining weeks of the festival, when Hayley becomes a star, Alex becomes a pariah, and Sophie becomes increasingly estranged from her boyfriend while growing closer to her disgraced friend. Runcie spares us no detail of Alex's colourful love life over the years but, wisely, she never allows her anti-hero to have committed any actual crimes. He's just a good-looking guy with a privileged upbringing and a great job who's spent his adult life using women for his own sexual gratification while never giving their feelings a second thought. Refusing to accept any responsibility for the pain he's caused, he continues to defend his behaviour in ways that only add to his downfall. READ MORE Alex's reaction to being challenged by people he considers his social and intellectual inferiors reminded me of the arrogance and narcissism of the former television actor turned right-wing provocateur Laurence to task on Question Time in 2020, Fox was so outraged at being criticised for his ill-informed views on race that he effectively imploded, losing his career and decrying on social media how England is overrun by foreigners, burning Pride flags, posting unflattering pictures of women who've called him out, and losing multiple libel cases. Fox has learned nothing from his public disgrace and Alex feels deliberately created in his image, not least because he's also the son of a famous English thespian and has grown up surrounded by acting royalty. His sense of entitlement is astonishing, as is his utter conviction that in reviewing plays, and condemning most of them, he is, 'elevating the culture'. Which he's not. Only the artist can elevate or degrade the culture; the critic simply comments upon it. Bring the House Down is a powerful read, although there were a few moments that might have been excised. At times, Runcie – herself a former theatre reviewer for The Telegraph – allows Sophie's festival anecdotes to feel more like autobiography than fiction, such as when a US journalist expresses her disbelief that she has no formal training. And when Hayley, towards the end of the book, remarks that 'women are the strongest creatures on the planet', a character could have questioned this generalisation. After all, there are plenty of awful women out there, just as there are plenty of awful men, and decency is not restricted to one sex or the other. A few years after the #MeToo scandals, Bring the House Down is a timely reminder that even though the news cycle has moved on, the behaviour that inspired it continues, courtesy of men such as Andrew Tate , Donald Trump or Conor McGregor , and a global media that hangs off their every word, amplifying their voices despite their having treated women in ways that anyone with any moral convictions would decry. Politicians fell over themselves to tell people they watched Adolescence with their teenage sons. They could do worse than buy them a copy of this novel as well.
Daily Mail
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Hard-hitting Debuts to start this summer: The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne, Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie, Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin
The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne (Fleet £20, 416pp) I raced through this multi- generational, magical realist story about the Devil trying to get back into the good books of the Almighty using members of a black family. Yetunde is the first to be visited by the Devil, when she wakes up surrounded by dead bodies on a slave ship from Africa towards a hellish life in captivity in America. The Devil offers Yetunde salvation in return for an eternal bargain, which forms the basis for the various stories of eight generations of Yetunde's family over the next century and a half. At pivotal moments, each protagonist is visited by the Devil and offered a desperate choice. From slavery through to modern racism, each generation's pain incorporates that of the previous. Compelling. Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie (The Borough Press £16.99, 320pp) Narrator Sophie is a junior culture writer for a national newspaper covering the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It's business as usual with lots of parties and little sleep until Sophie's theatre critic colleague and festival flatmate, Alex Lyons, becomes embroiled in a scandal. Alex is known for his one-star, brutal reviews and dashes off an eviscerating takedown of comedian Hayley's one-woman show. Alex then meets Hayley in a bar and sleeps with her, barely considering the words about to hit the newsstand. Hayley channels her rage into a new show about what a disgusting person Alex is. It's a smash hit, and the aftermath is life-ruining for Alex. Beautifully written and brilliant on trolling, nepotism and misogyny. I loved it. Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin (Summit Books £16.99, 320pp) Protagonist Smith is a black, queer, handsome Stanford graduate. His elegant existence is destroyed when he is caught taking cocaine outside a fashionable nightspot. His family and wealthy friends are horrified when he is pulled into the court system. Since Smith's best friend Elle – the daughter of a famous soul singer – was recently found dead, people have been cutting him some slack around his drunken bad behaviour, but an arrest is a step too far for his parents. Smith learns the hard way that although his class protects him from certain things, his race often creates harsher consequences. Gripping.
