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The Guardian
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie review – the joy of the hatchet job
When Jesus is pressed to condemn the woman taken in adultery, he says, 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.' No one does, and a lesson in critical generosity is learned. Judge not, that ye be not judged. Is giving an artist a one-star review an act of abuse – casting the first stone? Is it worse when the reviewer is male and the artist female? That's the starting point of this entertaining and very timely debut novel from Charlotte Runcie, an arts journalist who, as a young intern, was lambasted on stage by a successful standup to whom she'd given a bad review. Alex Lyons, chief theatre critic for a national newspaper, is known for his hatchet jobs. It's the Edinburgh fringe, and he's sitting through a one-woman standup show. 'The solo performance artist, Hayley Sinclair, had a lot to say about the climate emergency, the patriarchy, and the looming end of the world, which was fair enough, but unfortunately her show was so terrible that, by half an hour in, Alex had decided that he actually wanted the world to end as soon as possible.' Instead, immediately after bashing out his one-star review, he goes to a bar, encounters an emotionally exhausted post-show Hayley, and invites her back to the flat he is sharing with another journalist, Sophie Ridgen. It is only the next morning that Hayley, after spending the night with Alex, reads the eviscerating, career-ending words he has written about her: 'a dull, hectoring frump, like one of those 1950s cartoons of housewives beating their husbands with a rolling pin'. Alex blithely walks in from his morning shower to find Hayley with his brickbat in her hands. It is a delightfully excruciating scene, setting in motion one of the most enjoyable novels I've read in a long time. Although as a male reviewer of a female artist, for a national newspaper, who by chance read much of the book on the train south from Edinburgh, I experienced moments of very meta-terror and mischief. Wouldn't the most fun review to write, but even more to read, be an absolute slating? Wasn't I, too, being tempted to cast the first stone? Luckily, Runcie's verbal wit, narrative chops and emotional subtlety rendered that impossible. Alongside a fringe festival retelling of the history of the #MeToo movement, we also get a will-they-won't-they plot and an inside account of so-Alex-has-been-publicly-shamed. Because, in reaction to her awful one-star review, and the one-night stand, Hayley transforms her one-woman show into 'The Alex Lyons Experience' – a one-star review of Alex's entire life and an immediate star-making media sensation. She retells the story of her encounter with Alex, then opens the stage for other women to share the appalling things Alex or other Alex-like men have done to them. And as clips from the show go viral, resonating far beyond a small function room below a pub and bringing forth similar stories from thousands of women, it starts to seem as though most men – all men? – are deserving of similar humiliation. And if not that, then a good digital stoning. As the Black Mirror episode Nosedive foretold, these days we are all but forced to participate in a culture of constantly rating one another. Midway through the novel, Sophie finds herself getting self-hatingly drunk at a festival party. There was an interactive customer feedback device propped up on the bar. Tell us what you think of our service, it said, and underneath there were two buttons you could press: an angry red face or a smiling green one. Excellent or worthless, nothing in between. Review your experience, share your thoughts, recommend us to your friends, swipe left, swipe right, leave a comment, have an opinion. Everyone's a critic. But shouldn't we be more forgiving? Like Jesus. When he was born, his father only gave him one star. Toby Litt is Head of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton. Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie is published by Borough (£16.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Scotsman
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
He gave her a one star review. She ruined his life. When an Edinburgh Fringe performer turns the tables on a critic.
Reviewer turned author Charlotte Runcie's debut published novel Bring the House Down is out now. | Sophie Davidson Charlotte Runcie's debut novel Bring the House Down draws on her time as a Festival reviewer and captures the fraught and funny frenzy of the city in August. Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... What happens when an Edinburgh Fringe performer fights back against the critic who dissed her show, putting him under the spotlight on stage and on trial by social media and ends up with a hit? That's the scenario in journalist and novelist Charlotte Runcie's Bring the House Down, set in the frenzied atmosphere of the world's biggest arts festival. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Years as a reviewer for various publications, witnessing up close and personal the glory and devastation that result from chasing coveted stars, have inspired her debut novel which is a funny, thought- provoking roller-coaster of a read. It explores questions such as who decides what is good and bad art, why men can't help behaving badly and how social media leads people into expressing an opinion on everything from politics to Posh's family feud. In Bring the House Down, critic Alex watches performer Hayley's show, rushes off a crushing one-star review for the next day's paper then heads to a bar where he bumps into her and they spend the night together without him revealing who he is or what he has done. Next morning his colleague and flatmate Sophie unintentionally lets Hayley see the review and the performer turns her rage into revenge by including a judgement of his life and misdemeanours in her show, turning it into an immediate smash hit which destroys him and his reputation. Charlotte Runcie has years of Edinburgh Festival experience and a long-standing love for the Fringe. | Sophie Davidson 'I really wanted to write something that was juicy and thought-provoking but most of all fun,' says Runcie. Runcie's journalism career started out at the Fringe back in 2009/10, writing reviews as an intern when she was still an English Literature student at Cambridge for online websites and media outlets including The Scotsman. She became The Daily Telegraph's arts critic and a radio columnist and arts writer and spent several years living in Edinburgh, reviewing live performances at the Festival. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Describing herself as an 'omnivorous writer' the daughter of Scottish drama director Marilyn Imrie and James Runcie, writer of the Grantchester Chronicles which were adapted into the TV series, has also turned her talents to poetry and was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year, while her memoir, Salt On Your Tongue, was a BBC4 Book of the Week and Book of the Year in The Scotsman, the Spectator and Prospect. 'I really loved the opportunity to go and see as many shows as possible, throwing myself into it. I learnt on the job at The Fringe and maybe that's part of what I found troubling, because it sometimes felt like the blind leading the blind because I was maybe 19 years old reviewing a show by someone who's never been to the Festival before, maybe only ever done one or two shows and never really been reviewed and so takes it very personally and it all felt quite raw, and improvisational. I certainly learned a lot of things the hard way. Particularly how personally people can take things.' Now approaching 36 and a mother of two, soon to be three, Runcie says she's come a long way as a critic and is clear about what the job entails for her. 'I think it's a real privilege to take a piece of work someone has made and try to engage with it as thoroughly as possible and with what they were trying to do and with how effective it is and place it in the broader cultural context. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Some critics, and certainly Alex in Bring The House Down, think their priority is writing entertaining copy, which is obviously important, but you have a responsibility to, if this doesn't sound too grand, the culture as well as the person who has made the work. 'There's something that in a fast-paced journalistic environment where editors are interested in just getting things on the page and out quickly with a headline that grabs and a nice picture that looks exciting, can get lost. It's a very difficult balance to strike.' 'I came from the experience of being a critic and thinking what if this revenge on a critic had extra complicating factors? I felt it was unwritten about and that critics are often portrayed as kind of snooty know-it-alls, disconnected, cultural figures who waltz in with a free ticket, cast judgement and vanish. Whereas I know from the inside that critics are human beings and it's interesting to look at the person who's written something that can provoke or upset or reinforce. What's it like to be that person sitting at a keyboard formulating that text which is going to have a ripple effect? Runcie knows how personally a performer can take a review and in the frenzied atmosphere of the Fringe - during which performers unhappy with their reviews have been known to express their displeasure by sending underwear to writers or donning burlesque costumes and picketing publications' buildings in the past - emotions can run high. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'There was one occasion at the Fringe where I did a critical review of a comedian's show, which I thought was fair, but she very much disagreed with. She Googled me and wrote an extra five minutes for her show based on what she found, mocking me and my family and my life and other things I had written.' Runcie laughs, time having given the memory perspective. 'For the next couple of weeks of the Fringe I had people coming up to me saying 'did you know you're in this show and it's so funny'. I thought that's fair enough, I used my platform and she used hers and there's not a thing I can do about it. 'I personally thought it was unfair what she was saying, but she thought that what I had written was unfair, and I suppose you could say that is part of the magic of the Fringe, this live dialogue between audience, critic and performer. Because there are shows every night for a month where things can change and evolve, and that's the joy and the thrill of it, and being part of it is an honour.' Did she go along to see the updated version of the show in which she now featured? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'No, I was too much of a coward,' she laughs. 'Also I thought if I go that kind of ruins it a bit, and just perpetuates it. She's had her say and that's fine. 'This was a long time ago but over the years it stuck with me and forced me to ask myself questions about how much worse that could have been. 'What if I'd been a man, that would have changed the power dynamic because women being reviewed by men is its own whole thing. And what if we'd had some kind of personal interaction as well where she'd felt doubly betrayed? Because at The Fringe, you constantly bump into everybody because there are a limited number of bars and clubs and this unique melting pot atmosphere. 'I thought what if the critic had it coming, what if lots of people agreed they needed to be taken down a peg or two, then the story started to snowball in my mind and became this book.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad With Fringe shows starting small and building by word of mouth to be sell out, award winners and going on to be global TV network hits, such as Fleabag and Baby Reindeer, the stakes are high for performers who might be sinking their life savings into staging a show. 'I've seen very small shows with tiny budgets and no set and hardly any audience that get bigger and bigger then tour, then there's a TV adaptation and five years later they have become huge. 'If you're a writer, comedian or director bringing a show to The Fringe you could lose thousands of pounds and sink without trace, or it could be the absolute making of your career. It could be life changing, and so for some critic to waltz in and say ' nah, a waste of time', that's really hurtful and the emotional stakes of that are so high. It can lead people to act in all kinds of extreme ways which is something I wanted to explore,' she says. Bring The House Down by Charlotte Runcie, The Borough Press, Hardback, eBook and audio, £16.99 | Bring The House Down Has Runcie ever been kept awake at night, wondering if something she wrote was too much? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Yeah. I think that's healthy. I think you should. It's a responsibility and I think it's fair to the performer to think 'did I get that right or not?'. Surprisingly it's not the one star or five star reviews that cause the most furore but a seemingly innocuous three stars. 'Three stars seems to be the rating performers hate the most,' says Runcie. 'They say 'why couldn't you have just given it four?' and 'why couldn't you have just understood it more?' 'I gave a one-man show three stars and he was really, really upset. He sent a complaint to my editor, said I hadn't understood it, and my editor stood by me, said it was good writing and that I said I liked the show. It wasn't even very critical but it did make me think, could I have been more generous? I don't know. I still think about that one, because he was SO upset.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I think people find it easier to dismiss one star reviews. They just think 'this critic's an idiot', 'they didn't get it', but three stars is quite wounding somehow.' In defence of critics who may find themselves in receipt of letters of protest, pants and picketing, it's their job to give an honest opinion about a show the public are being charged to see, whether or not they might hurt the feelings of a performer, otherwise everyone would be awarded glowing five star reviews. 'To be unafraid of being disliked is a good quality for a critic really,' agrees Runcie. But where the character of Alex definitely crosses the line is by not telling Hayley he's a reviewer who has just publicly trashed her show and proceeding to have sex with her. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'There is that,' says Runcie, who wanted to show the complexities of Alex's character rather than write a pantomime baddy. 'I wanted to explore likeability because in this late #MeToo era of holding people, particularly men, to account for bad behaviour, it is easy to dismiss a celebrity accused of something terrible if you have no connection to them. 'But if someone who has been accused is close to you, a friend or colleague and they haven't been fired and you have to keep working with them, and still in your life and particularly if the criminal justice system isn't accusing them of a crime and prosecuting them but they've done something that you disagree with, that means you have to make your own decision about how far you want to keep this person in your life. 'It's complex and I wanted to make Alex funny, clever, likeable, with a sheen of celebrity and a bit of fame. Sophie likes being around him and even when he's going through his downfall, he's the centre of his own drama and she quite likes being adjacent to that. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad While all of the characters in Runcie's book are fictional, speculation as to who the critic Alex is based on is rife. 'I've had so many people say 'you based Alex on this person' and I've had to say 'I don't know who that is' because he's not based on anyone, none of the characters are. But he must be of a breed. I think that's really telling how many men in media are like this,' she says. Even if you've never been to the Edinburgh Fringe and witnessed, as Runcie has, everything from shows in public toilets to poetry readings in a cupboard while being fed biscuits to watching a baby sleep or Shakespeare in Mandarin and comedy in Welsh, Bring the House Down touches a nerve with its discussion of how technology has made critics of us all. 'What spurred me to write it was having worked as a critic, writing my opinion for newspapers and magazines, but also realising how much more widely criticism had become part of all of our lives in the internet era, and the social media era in particular. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It feels like there's pressure to weigh in and have an opinion on any kind of event, especially any event which requires you to take a moral stance and we're constantly being asked to pass judgement on things. 'Even buying something online you get an email two days later saying can you rate it, how many stars? And I worry that there's a corrosive, cumulative effect of all of this asking us to have opinions. Are we supposed to be having opinions on this many things? Charlotte Runcie will be appearing at Edinburgh International Book Festival in August with her debut novel, Bring The House Down. | Sophie Davidson 'It means when something major happens in the news we feel we have to make a statement on it, almost like we're some kind of politician or celebrity even if we just have a private instagram account, like we have to have a stance. 'We are all publishers now of our own opinions and that means that they can come back to haunt us.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'So even though the book is set in journalism and theatre and the Edinburgh Fringe, all worlds I know really well, I hope it taps more broadly into something that affects all of us or has troubled other people in the way it's troubled me.' 'Edinburgh is the only place where this story could happen, where there is a show that could change every night, where you could go and see a one-woman show in a basement and it could change your life,' says Runcie, 'but it's had an incredible international reaction. People are aware of Edinburgh as an international arts festival and there's interest in how that happens and the people involved in making it, but there's also interest in questions of complicity, revenge and the mistreatment of women too. I think there is maybe an international moment of exploring these themes, the late #MeToo effect.' As well as promoting Bring The House Down and working on another novel and a PhD, Runcie is waiting for the arrival of her third child. 'I am writing another novel, also contemporary but it's in the early stages where if I say too much about it it would change and then it would not be what I said it was. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad And despite living in Wales these days, Edinburgh in August still has a pull for Runcie. 'The Festival has always been a massive part of my life and I've been going to see shows my whole life because my parents worked in theatre, and so does my sister, and I lived in Edinburgh for several years. Whenever I say I'm not going to be in Edinburgh this August, something happens and I'm always there. This year I'm going to have just had a baby so I thought there's no way I'm going to go, but I'm up for a week because I'll be appearing at the book festival. And I'm going to bring the baby.' 'It's quite daunting, the book coming out and the baby at the same time. I keep accidentally saying 'I'm publishing a baby',' she laughs. Publishing a baby or birthing a book - they sound like exactly the sort of late night Fringe shows Charlotte Runcie would love to watch and give a star rating. Bring The House Down by Charlotte Runcie, The Borough Press, Hardback, eBook and audio, £16.99
Scotsman
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie review: 'a tale of toxic masculinity, pettiness and hysteria'
In Charlotte Runcie's new novel, set during the Edinburgh Fringe, an actress takes inventive revenge on a theatre critic who sleeps with her after panning her show. Review by Stuart Kelly Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... If Graham Greene is correct and an author requires a splinter of ice in their heart, then a critic needs a glacier; along with a brass neck, an iron constitution, steel nerves, and possibly an acid tongue. Charlotte Runcie, an arts journalist, poet and memoirist, clearly has guts, as her debut novel, set during the Edinburgh festivals, is about critics and public criticism. There are other poachers turned gamekeepers – James Wood wrote the novels The Book Against God and more recently Upstate; Leo Robson has just published The Boys; Sam Leith's The Coincidence Engine is underrated in my mind. It is tempting to turn the book's grabline ('A One Star Review. A Five Star Payback') against it and give the novel the equivalent of a beta minus, but it skewers the pointlessness of star ratings fairly well. Charlotte Runcie | Sophie Davidson The narrator is Sophie, a junior arts writer on a newspaper, of which 'she can't give you the name… but let's just say it's considered by some people to be the last remaining newspaper of decency, and by other people to be a rag of unforgivable bias'. This should be warning enough to dissuade readers from treating it as a roman-à-clef, and any comparisons to real people are indications of a generic type, not grounds for claiming defamation. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sophie is back from maternity leave (her partner is an academic), and in some ways still emotionally adrift: her father has a new family, her mother has died of pancreatic cancer. She is sharing a flat with the paper's star theatre critic, Alex Lyons, who is famously waspish, arrogant and charming. He looks like a greyhound, says things like 'since I turned thirty, getting laid has become embarrassingly easy', and is able to name drop Adorno, Derrida and Stanislavski as well as 'deferential feminist stuff' such as Greer, Butler and the late Sarah Kane. It is maybe just me, but Stanislavski rang a little untrue and slightly old-fashioned here, and given the nature of the narrative you might have expected a nod to Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty or Vinterberg and Von Trier's Dogme 95 or even Marina Abramović. If you need a mental shorthand, think of AA Gill or Giles Coren. The spark of the story is Alex reviewing a dreadful one-woman show by Hayley Sinclair called 'Climate Emergence-She' (kudos to Runcie for creating a title as groanworthy as much of the Fringe). Having filed his copy, he goes for a drink, meets Hayley by chance and sleeps with her, without mentioning his job. Her reaction is to change her show completely: it is now called 'The Alex Lyons Experience', details his shabbiness and (audience participation) asks for other women to share their memories of him. Alex has never made any moves on Sophie, and the pressure-cooker flat takes on different charges of protectiveness, attraction, and betrayal. Now a cause célèbre, Alex is swiftly becoming a #MeToo totem. Tragedy literally means 'goat-song' and had a sacrificed scapegoat at its religious centre; but this, alas, is a comedy. Alex is the child of famous actors, and there is much railing about his 'nepo baby' status. It is not, I think, unfair to mention that Runcie is the daughter of James Runcie (author of the deft Grantchester novels), and granddaughter of the former archbishop, Robert. This is relevant because she seems too nice to exploit the story's potential. There is a fleeting reference to Waugh's Scoop, but the mixture of toxic masculinity, creative solipsism, bad faith, pretentiousness, pettiness and hysteria really requires different skills. Writers like Shalom Auslander, Julius Taranto or Timur Vermes have the necessary capacity of going too far and not knowing when to stop. If it were filmed, it should be in the hands of Armando Iannucci, or, better yet, Chris Morris. The other option would be to drop the comedy altogether and write something serious. Having reviewed and admired Runcie's non-fiction book, Salt On Your Tongue, I rather think it would be a more natural fit. There are important things to say about how to be discerning in a culture which uses the word 'judgmental' as an accusation. In terms of exploitative arts culture, critics are pretty negligible, lower even than the writers. The old joke about the starlet so dumb she slept with the writer to advance her career does make a serious point about where actual power lies: with studios and producers. The 'everyone's a critic' paradigm means that the greater the number of critics, the more the gaussian curve will settle to three out of five stars. This is not whaur extremes meet, as MacDiarmid famously wanted. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Certainly moral judgements are ten a penny these days, and it's hard to argue that Alex isn't 'a f***ing piece of shit'. Does that justify the opinions 'journalists are truly the worst of humanity' and 'find me a critic that isn't an arsehole?' I will always stand up for critics having different opinions, even when I read reviews by others and wonder if they're thick or wicked or shills. At least they're still humans.
