Review Ink

Ink
by James Graham

It's The Sun Wot Won It
https://almeida.co.uk/

At this very moment one of the UK's main news agencies is developing robot reporters for local news coverage.

James Graham's Ink looks back to another age when reporters on local newspapers were hungry to reach Fleet Street, every newspaper had its own watering hole and the print unions in control of the hot metal ruled the roost. More ink and less inc.

And The Sun newspaper ousted The Mirror, grabbing its traditional working class reader base as Britain's bestselling newspaper after new proprietor, Aussie outsider Rupert Murdoch, took over in 1969.

Ink charts the transformation of The Sun from an ailing left wing broadsheet to a cheeky chappie, aspirational tabloid with its infamous topless Page 3 model, focussing on Murdoch (Bertie Carvel) and, above all, its first editor, the son of a Yorkshire colliery blacksmith, Larry Lamb (Richard Coyle).

We're in at the start of a legend, that of The Sun, and also just before Margaret Thatcher's ascension to Prime Minister and the move to Wapping where the play ends.

Ink mixes variety japes - it even begins with the old Max Bygraves' catchphrase "I wanna tell you a story" - with the towering personalities of owner and editor as The Sun became "The Soaraway Sun".

Yet Graham's and director Rupert Goold's approach feels scattergun. There's an introduction to reporting through the five W's of journalism - What, Who, Where, When and Why - for the unintiated.

Giant Ws then remain on Bunny Christie's deliberately and evocative ramshackle two storey offices. Murdoch and Lamb dine out on lobster (although documented as true, it's ironic as lobster has its own place in newspaper slang) in a Covent Garden restaurant where they map out the future of The Sun.

Murdoch of course gives Lamb, at last in a prized editor's chair, an impossible deadline which he fulfils in equally ramshackle fashion. Lamb gathers together a group of journalistic ne'er-do-wells and sidelined hacks, apparently after Fleet Street veterans with bulging contacts' books had rejected his offers.

There's certainly a feel of the mix of older oddballs and new generation hacks and photographers with the heady rush of ideas, plucked out of the air or the result of expediency,  at the first editorial and executive meetings. The musical hall/variety thread continues with pop ditties of the time and the cast, caught up in the euphoria of the moment, breaking out into song and dance.

But, despite darker true episodes with the abduction of the wife of a Sun executive, Ink never really digs deep and is more of a scrapbook than an integrated play.

As is sometimes perhaps inevitable with real people in the frame, the performances of Carvel and Coyle as Murdoch and Lamb at first do feel studied. However they do eventually come into their own as personalities on stage in their own right.

As we've indicated there's the trademark Rupert Goold song and dance with choreography by Lynn Paage, but this sometimes feels like wallpaper for a lack of strong story narrative. Many of the jokes are heavy-handed. It's broadbrush and often fun but never seems truly to bring together a substantial story.

It's the clever characterisations from the strong cast that hold it all together - besides Coyle and Carvel, there's David Schofield's Mirror old guard Hugh Cudlipp, Tim Steed's fastidious deputy editor Bernard Shrimsley while Sophie Stanton is a firmly feminist women's page editor in a man's world, Joyce Hopkirk and Pearl Chanda is the first Page 3 girl, Stephanie Rhan.

Ink is mostly bright and breezy and also gives due regard to a tragic episode, but it never really amplifies its tale, preferring often to make passing references than to be truly thought-provoking. So it may not make the colour scheme with any tabloid revamp but it's an amber/green light.  

Review Monster Raving Loony

Monster Raving Loony

by James Graham

National Lampoon

http://www.sohotheatre.com/

We at TLT Towers would like thank everyone who has urged us to stand for office in the service of their country. But having seen the trials and tribulations of David Edward Sutch, (1940-1999) better known as Screamng Lord Sutch, and the Monster Raving Loony Party, in Mr James Graham's latest play, not to mention the cost of a deposit, they regretfully have to withdraw their candidature.

Milord's rise to fame and no office began, according to this play, in Harrow Social Club, Harrow being a suburb in North London as lead vocals in band The Savages, a musical ensemble (aka a rock group) in which all the multi-talented actors in this entertainment partake.

Monster Raving Loony is a gallop through the life of  Lord Sutch (plsyed by leopard-skin-jacketed Samuel James). The "Lord", we are told, was adopted by deed poll. Although Lord Sutch tells us he stood "in queue at the town hall" which makes us suspicious that it may just possibly be a irreverent comment on  Her Majesty's honours' system.

We do feel obliged to register our interest, lest we appear compromised, in this show. On our seat we found a gift left by the management consisting of 1) A conical party hat (but which party was never elucidated) 2) A bingo card (as we didn't win we assume it wasn't fixed) 3) A raffle ticket (ditto) 4) A Groucho Marx false nose and glasses.

Yes, there is a certain amount of gentle audience participation including a sing-along and a session of bingo. But being a scrupulously honest, impartial, recycling-minded reviewer, we left our party bag for the next xvoterx punter.

David (somehow his egalitarian stance prohibits the use of more formal monikers) was part of a moderately succssful "zany" (according to Wikipedia) group amd we in the audience were ably tutored by The Musician (Tom Attwood) on how to gain the skills to form our own pop group..

But then a quick rewind to the Brave New World  of post-(Second World) War Britain and the election of Labour Prime Minister Clement Atlee promising to implement policies emerging from the Beveridge Report.

If you are under 35, (please, please, please let us have readers of this blog who are under 35!) you may already be somewhat lost by these references. 

The play's use also of the tropes of comedy acts, radio and TV sitcoms from 1940s onwards may also be of most interest to those who are either of a certain age or the sort who frequent the forums of the British Comedy Guide,  bringing forth a cosy hot water bottle of recognition.

But, as far as we could see, the details of  and conclusions about David Sutch's life (brought up in Harrow,  a spell as a window cleaner, always lived with his mother, had a son who ended up in the US, in the Guinness Book of Records as the candidate losing the most number of elections) are rather sparse. His life is rather overwhelmed in this piece by the  spoofs of -er - spoofs, albeit carefully matched to the era and time in David's life.

So there's  music hall comedian Max Miller (Joe Alessi, one of the supporting cast slickly taking on a plethora of characters) with his, then, risque routine. The Lord Sutch trademark top hat  of a toff  appearing with male impersonator Ella Shields (Vivienne Acheampong), another music hall veteran.

Lord Snooty (Jack Brown) a cartoon character from popular kids' comic The Beano, wearing a top hat, conflated with Harrow public school uniform, carrying a violin and spouting Latin rubbing in the English class system.

However, while we're regaled with a history of British comedy with pleasurably familiar characterisations such as characters of  Peter Cook and Dandy Nichols (Joanna Brookes in fine impersonation fettle), the details of how Lord Sutch managed to keep in the limelight are frustratingly few.

The play downplays a moderately successful music career with recording contracts, a radio station with a manager who came to an untimely end and group members who went on to stellar music careers. 

We were wondering at the cross over between the recording and comedy industry and politics. But this kind of drawing together never came. The play prefers very general (in fact, much more general to the point of dissipation) overview of political trends from left wing-ism with undertones of communism to Thatcherism.

It's all good fun but rather manufactured, as if the effect on the audience were considered before the script. Still, director Simon Stokes keeps the pace brisk and there's much to enjoy. It just all feels rather pulled this way and that without David's ultimately real-life tragic fate touching us. So, while not wanting to be a party pooper, an amber light.