Fringe Festival critic gets his comeuppance in entertaining 'Bring the House Down'

Any assemblage tin corrupt its practitioners — and arts critics are nary exception. Are they enlightened standard-setters dragging america backmost from a taste abyss — oregon deformed exiles from the arts who, with sharpened pens and bent backs, are acceptable to pounce connected plot-holes and devour careers astatine a moment’s notice?

If Charlotte Runcie’s debut novel, “Bring the House Down,” is thing to spell by, it’s a spot of both. The publication centers astir 4 heady weeks astatine the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which begins the unraveling of 2 paper critics who person traveled up from London to screen the sprawling show creation event. Runcie, a erstwhile arts columnist for the Daily Telegraph, has created thing truthful delightfully snackable that you may, arsenic I did, gulp it down successful 2 oregon 3 sittings.

Runcie’s anti-hero is theatre professional Alex Lyons. Alex gives everything helium reviews either 1 prima oregon five, and the second are vanishingly rare. He bemoans a satellite of “online buying reviews,” wherever “five stars has travel to mean the baseline, alternatively than outstanding,” and truthful insists connected panning astir everything helium sees. What’s atrocious for artists is bully for him: His reviews go desperately sought-after vocation makers oregon breakers. “The insubstantial didn’t let Alex to grant zero stars. Otherwise, he’d bash it each the time.”

“Bring the House Down”

(Doubleday)

We larn astir Alex’s communicative done our narrator Sophie Ridgen, his workfellow who, contempt being successful her mid-30s similar Alex, is connected a precise antithetic track. Alex roseate rapidly done the newspaper’s ranks, and his reviews are featured connected the beforehand leafage astir daily. Sophie continues to toil arsenic a inferior civilization writer, picking up immoderate scraps cipher other wants. Sophie is besides a caller mom, overworking to compensate for clip mislaid to maternity leave. She feels uncomfortable successful her post-pregnancy body, exhausted and frustrated with her husband. Alex, connected the different hand, finds it “embarrassingly easy” to get laid.

But Alex’s glory days are numbered. Early connected astatine the Fringe, helium sees a one-woman amusement that, unsurprisingly, helium hates. He writes a reappraisal arsenic devastating arsenic it is idiosyncratic (calling the prima a “dull, hectoring frump,” her dependable a “high-pitched whine”). All of this would beryllium concern arsenic accustomed for Alex but for 1 problem: After rapidly filing his reappraisal of the show, helium bumps into Hayley Sinclair, its creator and star, successful a bar. He takes her location and sleeps with her. He knew the 1 prima was waiting for her; she did not.

When she finds out, determination is hellhole to pay. Hayley transforms her nightly amusement into the “Alex Lyons Experience,” collecting grounds from his ex-girlfriends and lovers, oregon adjacent those who person simply received atrocious reviews from him. Over the pursuing weeks her amusement swells into a Greek chorus of 1 man’s wrongs. The full nation, including members of Parliament, person blistery takes (the show is livestreamed). It doesn’t assistance his lawsuit that Alex is simply a spot of a nepo baby, arsenic his parent Judith is an histrion whose sanction would beryllium recognized successful astir British households.

Sophie, surviving with Alex successful the company-rented flat, has a beforehand enactment spot to his nationalist unraveling. She watches the livestreams with blameworthy awe, stalks Alex and Hayley compulsively online, and feverishly scans societal media for the latest gossip (Runcie is large astatine penning a fake mean Tweet/X dispatch). She starts missing calls with her hubby and their toddler son, arsenic she becomes afloat obsessed with the play unfolding successful Edinburgh.

As she continues to inhabit the aforesaid level arsenic her colleague, Sophie is progressively questioned by others arsenic to whose broadside she’s on, Alex oregon Hayley’s. For overmuch of the book, she seems incapable to marque up her mind. She refuses to springiness up connected Alex, and progressively becomes his lone root of companionship, which she can’t assistance but find flattering. But she besides finds herself sympathetic to and magnetized by Hayley, whose popularity is blossoming connected the Fringe circuit and beyond.

While Alex and Hayley some look to person other-worldly levels of charisma, 1 flaw with Runcie’s caller is that this is thing we are repeatedly told, alternatively than shown. Alex spends astir of the publication being condescending to Sophie, and yet she is transfixed by him. “He had the unusual quality to marque you consciousness arsenic if you were the lone idiosyncratic who was successful connected a joke, the lone idiosyncratic who understood immoderate cardinal information astir the satellite that escaped different people.” This feels unsatisfyingly generic, similar thing you mightiness find successful an online wedding vows template.

We are astatine slightest fixed much backstory and a much plausible mentation for Sophie’s fascination with Alex: the ego trip. Having been dragged down by motherhood, a rocky marriage, and grief implicit the decease of her ain mother, Sophie enjoys Alex’s expanding dependence connected her, a lone stone of enactment amid an water of alienation. There is thing undeniably delicious successful watching idiosyncratic you revere autumn to their knees, and Sophie begins to spot successful Alex “a tiny flickering of fear, astatine archetypal lone disposable arsenic a hardly perceptible interruption to his arrogance, similar a powerfulness chopped that dims the lights for conscionable a hundredth of a second.”

Hayley, unfortunately, ne'er rather comes to beingness successful the aforesaid way. And it remains unclear wherefore her show, which is fundamentally a litany of (legitimate) complaints astir a real-life unspeakable antheral with immoderate added pyrotechnics, takes Edinburgh and the full state by specified storm. “I find I can’t explicate wherefore it had the effect that it did,” Sophie tells us. “This wasn’t theater, not really; it was a happening. The assemblage weren’t spectators anymore, but a silent, connected web of righteous energy.” Without much to spell on, we person nary prime but to instrumentality her connection for it.

The effect feels similar a missed accidental to interrogate immoderate important questions. How overmuch does the individuality (gender, race, oregon class) of the professional substance erstwhile it comes to their quality to justice art? What astir the individuality of the creator themselves? In different words, who shall knock the critics? Readers whitethorn permission Runcie’s caller feeling that immoderate of these questions spell unanswered, but this profoundly entertaining caller is nevertheless good worthy the terms of admission.

Mills is simply a writer and quality rights researcher who has worked for Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Wall Street Journal and Associated Press. She lives successful New York.