"Bring Down the House" by Charlotte Runcie and the Role of the Critic

"Bring the House Down" by Charlotte Runcie is set in the very specific world of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Having been to the Festival multiple times, I could imagine myself in the small spaces where many of the performances take place and see the buskers on the streets promoting their shows. I could also appreciate how much it means to performers to put their shows on at the Fringe. Maybe they'll be discovered. At the very least, they have the chance to put their work -- which they often created -- in front of an audience. 

Enter Alex Lyons, the chief theatre critic for a national paper in the UK. These reviews are critical to the success -- or demise -- of a show. Within the space of a paragraph, we learn that he gave "Climate Emergence-SHE, written and performed by Hayley Sinclair, a lowly one star. As to what the review actually said, well, you'll get a sense right away of how devastating it would be. 

"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. Then, at least, he'd never have to risk seeing one of her performances again. That was a good line, so he put it in..." 

Yikes! A review like that is the kiss of death for a show, with "kiss" being the operative word here. When Alex meets Hayley later that night in a bar -- after filing his review -- he takes her home for a romp. Of course he hasn't disclosed to her that he's a theater critic, much less his thoughts about her show. She finds that out in the paper the next morning. 

Author Charlotte Runcie

Hayley is crushed. She's worked long and hard on her show and now it's all but over. But she's also blazingly angry. So instead of putting her tail between her legs and hiding, she morphs the show into something entirely different. Her new offering -- "The Alex Lyons Experience" -- begins with Hayley reading the review onstage while ripping her clothing and baring her teeth. It's not hard to visualize the performance with language like, "She smeared the berry lipstick on her mouth in a horizontal swipe of bloody crimson across her face." Sophie, an art critic and Alex's flatmate for the week, was there for the inaugural performance and said of it, "It was invigorating in the way that you might feel if you'd just drunk a lot of coffee and alcohol and then started screaming...Hayley was every human who had ever been betrayed...ever felt the plummet of grief in realizing the world is, after all, a dark and lonely place." Whoa. 

The story segues from there into the #MeToo movement and cancel culture. Jesse Green, Chief Theatre Critic for the NYT, notes in his review of the book that Runcie's story loses a bit of its propulsion by making Sophie the narrator and seguing into her personal life. I concur. Still, I enjoyed the novel, both in and of itself and because it raises the question of the role of critics and their responsibilities to their own audiences. If a show is, well, bad, should the critic come right out and say that (in a constructive way, of course) or should they just use less than enthusiastic language and expect their audience to read between the lines? It's something to think about, particularly as the cultural season here in Sarasota gets underway with a new reporter covering the arts scene. And now a quick word about author Charlotte Runcie...

Authors are often encouraged to write what they know, and that's exactly what Runcie did here. She has attended the Fringe Festival many times, both as a theater lover and as a critic. A bit surprisingly, Runcie went through an experience not wholly unlike that of Alex when she gave a comic's show a two star review. The comic turned the review on its head by adding a five minute bit into her show about how awful Runcie was. For more on the author and that experience, click here. And for a piece by Runcie about the symbiotic relationship between critics and performers, click here. 

Now get out there and enjoy a live performance!