In The Print - Review

King's Head Theatre, London

*****

Written by Robert Kahn and Tom Salinsky

Directed by Josh Roche

Alan Cox and Claudia Jolly

Rarely are history, politics and drama fused so perfectly as in In The Print, currently playing at the King’s Head Theatre. The title draws on the phrase, used for years, by workers in the print rooms of the newspaper industry to describe their employment. 

Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky’s play is set at the time of the 1986 decision by Rupert Murdoch’s News International corporation to shift the printing of its four titles from the labour-intensive presses of the central London, to a modern computerised print factory in Wapping in the city’s east end. Brenda Dean was the leader of SOGAT, the major print workers’ trade union of the time, with the genius of this story being its creation of fictional tableaux based around historical facts, and all performed to perfection.

The play demands some context, with In The Print’s programme helpfully including a description of the times:

“The Fleet Street print unions - SOGAT and the National Graphical Association, the NGA – held the upper hand. Newspaper operations were hugely inefficient, with old-fashioned hot metal presses which kept breaking down, and ancient agreements with the unions about which type of worker did which job. Print workers were remarkably well-paid, and enjoyed short hours which enabled them to hold second jobs such as driving cabs. Fleet Street print-rooms were rife with legendary Spanish Practices' - overmanning, cash payments, and non-existent ghost workers with names such as Donald Duck.”

Alan Cox plays Murdoch, with Claudia Jolly as Dean. (A nod here to Simon Money, the production’s dialect coach, who has honed Cox’s required Australian accent to perfection.) Both lead performers are electrifying in their interpretations - Cox depicting Murdoch’s ruthless singleness of purpose brilliantly, as Jolly captures the agonies of Dean desperately trying to defend the livelihoods of her members while having ultimately to surrender her fight to the march of technology and progress.

Jolly and Cox are ably supported by Alasdair Harvey, Georgia Landers, Jonathan Jaynes and Russell Bentley who between them convey a raft of recognisable supporting characters of the era ranging from union officials through to Murdoch’s editors. Harvey’s Andrew Neil (The Sunday Times) and Bentley’s Kelvin MacKenzie (The Sun) are particularly enjoyable cameos. Josh Roche’s direction is deftly nuanced, in particular tracing Jolly’s journey that sees Brenda Dean transition from defiance to defeat. 

It is sharp writing that packs so much well constructed content into this one-act, 90-minute gem. Older theatregoers will savour the well constructed return to the nation’s febrile industrial relations scene under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Younger audiences will simply enjoy this rather exquisite history lesson.

Runs until 3rd May

Photo credit: Charlie Flint