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nuanced picture of the younger Murdoch, physically awkward and often ill at ease, determined to smash what he sees as outdated and outmoded Fleet Street traditions, but occasionally nervous about the methods adopted by his editor.
