Alex Lyons, son of famous actress/director Judith Lyons, was the theatre critic for the most prestigious newspaper in Britain. His reviews could make or break a show and he was tired of the nuances between a one star and a five star performance. His solution was to drop the in-between and award most shows a one star review except for the precious few that merited five stars. Of course this made him a tyrant to most actors and productions but he got away with it as he was devilishly funny and boyishly handsome-love him or hate him he stirred up controversy which was good for sales.
He and colleague Sophie, the junior art critic, were sent to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe, a yearly festival of the arts where new bohemian work intermingled with the tried and true, and they were put up in the paper's yearly rental flat. Sophie was just coming off her year of maternity leave and was eager to resume her journalism career at the three week festival, as mothering was not helping her creative side. She wondered how she was going to cope with bad boy Alex as her flatmate, but had no idea how weird this was really going to get.
One of Alex's first assignments was a one-woman show by American Hayley Sinclair on the climate emergency. While he expected a performance, what he got was a heartfelt lecture that he felt would be better housed at a university. He wrote a stinging review and gave it one star because he wasn't allowed a no star review, and the copy was sent to the paper to be printed the next morning. After the show he felt hungry and went to a pub for some food, but they had already closed the kitchen. Sitting at the bar was Hayley, fueled up with adrenaline from her performance and they started chatting-of course Alex knew who she was, but didn't let on and they slept together at the flat. As Sophie sat down to read the morning paper with her coffee, she turned to the review, Alex was taking a shower and Hayley emerged from his room. And she saw the review-horrified, she shoved on her clothes and left. Alex figured that he would never see her again so it was over for him, but she left her cell phone and Sophie was tasked with returning it. She figured she could drop it off at that night's performance. But things had changed-instead of repeating the climate talk, Hayley had changed the show to "The Alex Lyons Experience," where she told her story and asked the audience to tell all of their friends and participate in tearing Alex down. At the end of the event, she burned her copy of the review.
No one had seen anything like this before-every night she told her story, and solicited guest speakers from the many women Alex had wronged...it was a three week sellout and tickets were impossible to buy. Even as Alex's career hit the toilet he would not apologize-he admitted being a cad, but would not touch what he considered the integrity of the review itself, which he felt deserved the one star treatment. As Sophie watched Alex's downward spiral, she felt like a referee and saw both sides of the arguments. But what if this gets too personal-will she go down with him?
The novel was based on a real incident that happened to Runcie, except she actually was the rookie writer who wrote a bad review of a (now famous) comedienne who wiped the floor with her for the rest of the festival. By making it a battle of the sexes and letting observer Sophie narrate the action in the first person, we get all angles of the disaster-behavior, feelings, and emotions of both combatants...will make a great discussion book and perhaps a five star play.
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