Reviewing: Ink

This week involved a jaunt to Angel to see Ink at the Almeida. A piece of new writing, looking at the re-forming of The Sun newspaper into the brash, loud format we know today, Ink is dark, funny, and a masterclass in the creative rewriting of politics.

The Almeida say:

Fleet Street. 1969. The Sun rises.

James Graham’s ruthless, red-topped new play leads with the birth of this country’s most influential newspaper – when a young and rebellious Rupert Murdoch asked the impossible and launched its first editor’s quest, against all odds, to give the people what they want.

I say: Go and see it.

James Graham's writing, Rupert Goold's direction, and a fabulous cast make this play unmissable, as far as I'm concerned. The set and sound design are also a delight. In fact, I left the theatre beaming.

Ink explores the ideas of 'news' and journalistic ethics through the story of The Sun's first editor Larry Lamb (Richard Coyle), and his moral testing at the the hands of Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel). The dialogue between the two men is rapid-fire, sweary, and sharp, and the performances of Carvel and Coyle are perfectly balanced.

The makeshift look of the set creates a strange sympathy for the team behind The Sun, which is quite an achievement, given that I, and probably most of the audience, fall distinctly within The Guardian's natural readership. The situating of the newspaper's first staff as underdogs is a clever way into making you rethink an institution that irrevocably changed the landscape of British journalism, and not for the better. Graham's script is brilliantly challenging in this respect - it allows you to take nothing for granted.

I loved Ink enough to be trying to make time to see it again, and that rarely happens. If you can get to it, you really should.

5/5: Brash, painfully funny, and terribly relevant
The Almeida
Until 5th August