Doug Lucie's 1997 satire about Grub Street and the scrote journalists who run an increasingly skewed, simplistic, downmarket Sunday newspaper owned by an Australian tycoon, has been cleverly revived to coincide with The Leveson Inquiry. Unfortunately, the play is of its time. While it accurately points to the outrageous malpractice of recent years, vast tracts of its righteous proselytysing are nothing more than bad blood, and not very well expressed bad blood at that.
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| Journalistic dimprint |
This particular production falls flat from the off. It feels like a school play with wooden dialogue, wooden execution and a DIY set. Part of this appeared to malfunction so the bottom half of a man sitting backstage and eating his dinner on a sofa, was visible during the tortuous first scene. All four scenes are overlong and dense with dialogue. The second half does provide some lively exchanges, but alas, they too are soon subsumed by dull sermonising.
The women in the play are certainly memorable. The only woman writer gets her job by taking on the role of a prostitute in fantasies that bring her editor to orgasm. The wife of the politics supremo has given his deputy a blow job in the car because, being of a certain age, fellatio means you never have to take your clothes off. There are two female cameos: a heroin raddled hooker who is being shagged badly by a man whom, one is guessing, has only ever had experience of vulcanised females with off-centre apertures, and a maid who steals. Why?
In conclusion: Southwark Playhouse can usually be relied on for some stonking fare, but unless you are Hugh Grant or Steve Coogan, you're unlikely to find this production of any great interest.
References
Southwark Playhouse
Catherine Love review in The Public Reviews
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