Susan Granger’s review of “Ink” (Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
Mills College: Journalism 101 – in our first class, Pierre Salinger (night editor of the “San Francisco Chronicle” before he became JFK’s Press Secretary) taught us the five essential questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why?
That same lesson begins James Graham’s irreverent, Olivier Award-winning play which delves into the defining historical moment in 1969, when the British media underwent a bold, brassy populist revolution.
“’Why?’ isn’t worth asking,” insists ambitious, adrenalized Australian entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel). “It’s ‘What’s next?’”
After buying the U.K.’s “Daily Sun,” Murdoch hires Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) as its editor. Reminding him that he’s the “son of a Yorkshire blacksmith,” brusque Murdoch cleverly plays on Lamb’s inherent class resentment, since he was repeatedly passed over for the top job at “The Mirror,” a rival tabloid.
Within in year, Murdoch’s failing Fleet Street broadsheet (full-sized newspaper) becomes a best-selling, testosterone-driven tabloid. When ethical questions inevitably arise, pandering to the populace’s baser instincts always wins over quality reporting.
Emphasizing sex, television and celebrity gossip, the “Sun” became synonymous with fun. But Lamb is warned by a member of Fleet Street’s Old Guard: “Pander to and promote the most base instincts of people all you like…create an appetite, but I warn you. You’ll have to keep feeding it.”
As fastidious, yet ferociously fanatic Murdoch, Bertie Carvel is almost reptilian in his diabolical avariciousness, easily manipulating Jonny Lee Miller as intrepid, inspired Larry Lamb, telling him: “Get the readers to become the storytellers…Isn’t that the real point of the revolution? When they’re producing their own content themselves?”
Director Rupert Goold, who helmed London’s West End production, conjures the pre-digital, pre-Internet, pre-PC Fleet Street world, adroitly mixing in music and dance, aided and abetted by choreographer Lynne Page, with production design/projections by Jon Driscoll, lighting by Neil Austin, sets & costumes by Bunny Christie, music & sound by Adam Cork.
“Ink” concludes with Murdoch heading to New York, determined to make TV news more populist, claiming, “Countries reinvent themselves all the time.” Onto Trump and Brexit.
During my lifetime, American journalism has changed radically, and this current season of plays, including “Network” and “Lifespan of a Fact,” reflects that. So – what’s next?