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nuanced picture of the younger Murdoch, physically awkward and often ill at ease, determined to smash what he sees as outdated and outmoded Fleet Street traditions, but occasionally nervous about the methods adopted by his editor. 

This House

by James Graham

seen at the Garrick Theatre on 11 January 2017

Directed by Jeremy Herrin, this production has transferred from Chichester, though the play was first presented at the National Theatre in 2012. It features Nathaniel Hawthorne as Jack Weatherill (the Tory Deputy Chief Whip), Steffan  Rhodri as Walter Harrison (the Labour Deputy Chief Whip), with Malcolm Sinclair as the Tory Chief Whip, Phil Daniels as the Labour Chief Whip (until his demise), and Lauren O'Neill as Ann Taylor, the only female (Labour) whip. Other cast members take various parts as MPs both lesser known and famous - there are cameo appearances for John Stonehouse, Norman St Jon Stevas and Michael Heseltine.

The set represents the House of Commons, and some members of the audience are seated as if on the Commons benches or in the visitors' galleries. Adroit lighting turns parts of the stage into other Parliamentary venues, in particular the Government and Opposition Whips' offices (there's a delicious joke that the Government office has chairs with adjustable seats whereas the Opposition has to make so with ordinary - though still not uncomfortable - chairs). The play examines the fraught years from 1974 to 1978 when Labour formed the government firstly in a hung parliament and then with the slenderest of majorities, leading to desperate measures to ensure that crucial votes were passed, thus avoiding a vote of no confidence.