Ink

by James Graham

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 5 July 2017

Rupert Goold directs Bertie Carvel as Rupert Murdoch and Richard Coyle as Larry Lamb with support from eleven others in this new play concerning Murdoch's acquisition of the Sun newspaper and his editor's efforts to surpass the sales figures of the rival Daily Mirror within a year.

Once again James Graham has looked to a significant episode in British life from four or five decades ago and converted it into a fascinating play which turns out to have unexpected contemporary relevance. This House dealt with the minority Labour government of the mid-1970s and exposed in dramatic form the extraordinary stresses under which such a government operates from day to day. Now, after the recent election, the Tories find themselves in a similar and unenviable situation, and barely a month since the election it is already clear that strength and stability may well be in short supply.

Ink deals with the emergence of Rupert Murdoch as an unignorable figure in the field of British print media, at just the time in which his Fox company is proposing to become the major shareholder (i.e. owner) of Sky. But the play presents a surprisingly nuanced picture of the younger Murdoch, physically awkward and often ill at ease, determined to smash what he sees as outdated and outmoded Fleet Street traditions, but occasionally nervous about the methods adopted by his editor. 

Bakkhai

by Euripides in a new version by Anne Carson

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 10 August 2015

This is the second production in the Almeida Greeks season (following 'Oresteia', reviewed in June 2015). It is directed by James Macdonald and designed by Antony McDonald, and features Ben Whishaw, Bertie Carvel and Kevin Harvey with a chorus of ten women (the Bakkhai of the title). Music for the chorus is composed by Orlando Gough.

Unlike 'Oresteia', which was more of an interpretation than a translation, Anne Carson's version of this play follows the original more closely (apart from a few sly anachronisms to emphasise the disorienting effect of Euripides' black humour). The production too reflects a good deal of what is known about the original style of performance. The three actors play all the speaking roles, while the choric odes are sung, and even when the chorus speaks it is usually in unison and the voices often become songlike. The obvious points of departure from 'original practice' (so far as it is known) are that the chorus is performed by women rather than adolescent boys, and that there are no masks. The visual presentation of the speaking characters is, however, prominently stylised.