“Ink” at Almeida Theatre
Vera Liber in north London
6 July 2017
The stain and stink of ink leaves hands and souls black. The Sun‘s eclipse of the Daily Mirror is a juicy drama, but then newspaper shenanigans, mogul media owners and personnel inevitably make good copy. These days they seem to be constantly in the news, not least Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World alleged phone-hacking saga or his bid for Sky. Influential newspaper barons with backdoors to government and power (one only has to remember The Sun‘s headline after the 1992 general election: “It’s The Sun Wot Won It”), consumed by rivalry, are as much public entertainment as providers of “news”.
Playwright James Graham and director Rupert Goold seize on that in this Brechtian, dynamic, hot-metal, hellish Stakhanovite world of Ink where presses ring, hammers strike, ink flows on Bunny Christie’s cluttered set comprising a pyramid of desks and props … and a piano. There is singing and line dancing to popular tunes at moments of high elation.”Come on let’s work together” the song goes, and the dance is comic and crude and full of innuendos, the headlines outrageous and smutty. “Forward with the People”, The Sun‘s Soviet-sounding mission statement, is a blazing lie and a venal boast.
“Give the people what they want” was Murdoch’s business proposition to editor Larry Lamb. How far would you go with that to smash the Daily Mirror‘s sales figures supremacy? Play to the lowest common denominator? And in the process deal a blow to the smug establishment, to the incestuous “stuck-up broadsheets”. Does this iconoclast have a chip on his shoulder – he hates private schools, closed-shop unions? Graham says he senses a strange shy loneliness in Murdoch: could it be sociopathic? The great disruptor, Murdoch sees himself as a revolutionary and a visionary. And he loves the all-out war. If one brings no historical baggage or knowledge to Ink, at face value Murdoch comes across as carnivorous (he likes his steak exceedingly rare), a cunning fox, and a ruthless, amoral operator. His man Lamb comes across as a pugnacious and tenacious pit bull (in the programme I read of his “half-supressed anger” and “megalomaniac tendencies”.) Graham’s This House (2012), to tour next year, delved into the world of the government whips during a crucial time for the Labour Party in the 1970s; now in Ink we have the unstoppable rise of populism. Here’s where it began – possibly.
In 1969 Murdoch bought the ailing Sun from the Mirror Group. They were glad to unload it. Murdoch challenged his editor to equal if not beat the Mirror‘s sales – an impossible task – and set him a time limit. Lamb rose to the bait – who wouldn’t? He was given carte blanche to build his own team, which he did, in turn poaching from the Mirror people he knew, prising some out of low dives and giving them plenty of leeway. His team of chancers are a variegated bunch with few scruples. Their brainstorming sessions keep the tension high and the pace steams along. What do people like? Horoscopes (Murdoch is a Pisces and apparently believes in them), weather on the second page, sport, TV listings (a first),free stuff, bingo, pretty women, jokes, and sex which Lamb euphemistically calls love. WIN FREE LOVE – these three catchwords must figure on the front page.
Everything is fair game, even the sacrosanct. When the wife of Murdoch’s deputy chairman, Muriel McKay, is mistakenly kidnapped and murdered – the abductors thought she was Murdoch’s wife – Lamb prints her pleading letter when even Murdoch feels uncomfortable doing so. This is when it goes beyond the pale, but Lamb isn’t finished yet. He is catching up with the Mirror, almost there. There is one day to go; what outrageous eye-catching thing can he do? On page three topless models in a family newspaper – that’s what. How he persuades the model to pose is canny, artful, and dishonest. Apparently Sir Albert “Larry” Lamb – yes, given a gong by Margaret Thatcher in 1980 – said that was the one thing he regretted. The first page-three girl was vilified and her life ruined. Collateral damage.
Lots of that in Murdoch’s street-fighting career. Lamb sold his cynical soul to an even more cynical devil. The Mirror was beaten. Bertie Carvel inhabits Murdoch with shifty ease. A closely observed character study, he is a sleek devouring shark. His limp arms and impatient twitching fingers hint at a subtext and another level of meaning. But it is Richard Coyle as Lamb, the larger role, who dominates the stage and on whom the play hangs. With blunt Northern accent and blunt tactics, he faces off his old master Hugh Cudlipp (David Schofield) who had standards and wished to educate the working man not to exploit him. (“A good paper must be an Open University” he once stated) while remaining aware of his own powerful connections.
There is newspaper jargon and excellent throwaway lines in the play: “Power replaces itself with itself”, “Cudlipp can’t be stuck-up, he’s Welsh”, “Who needs friends when you have readers” … The rivalry, the verbal battles, the edgy dialogue are stimulating, demanding of attention. ln fact, the play demands almost three hours of close attention, an exhilarating workout for the brain. It’s a not unsympathetic portrait of Murdoch, a restless man who likes to leave his rubbish behind in hotel rooms to be cleared up by someone else. Murdoch found the right man in Lamb to do just that and put the Mirror, the biggest selling paper of that time, in the shade of the rising Sun. It was a vanity project with a long reach …
The cast of 13 is superb; some have double and triple roles. Sophie Stanton as the no-nonsense women’s editor and as Muriel McKay, Pearl Chanda as the model, Justin Salinger as always giving it sardonic bite in the role of news editor, Tim Steed as the fastidious deputy editor, Geoffrey Freshwater playing the triple roles of Sir Alick McKay, The Times editor William Rees-Mogg, and the union chapel father bringing age and gravitas to the fold, Jack Holden as a long-haired inexperienced photographer with a girl’s name.
Lamb’s twist on the five ‘W’s of good storytelling journalism, as he calls them, are demonstrated: “Who, what, where, why, and what next?” Clever writing, agile direction, dark lighting (Neil Austin), the back-screen projection of rolling type and running ink by Jon Driscoll, jazzy sound and funky composition by Adam Cork invite involvement in that mythical Front Page /Citizen Kane world of Fleet Street and its unfettered goings-on. It’s deliciously wicked, and that’s its snare. Against all odds and by force of their arrogant audacity, crude, crass Murdoch and Lamb marched to their own tunes with buccaneering spirit and chutzpah. Is their ink indelible? The play is.
A who’s who in the programme notes would be useful for a wider young contemporary audience. As it is, sold-out Ink is speaking to the news-literate Almeida Islington audience – before transferring to the West End. But, whatever your age, Ink is a jaunty shrewd look at a slice of newspaper history. Did you know the Mirror was the first to bring out a free colour supplement? Did the shameless Sun up everybody’s game?
