Following the political dramatics of The Gang of Three, writers Robert Khan & Tom Salinsky return to the King’s Head with In The Print, a play based on the mid-80s “battle of Wapping”.
Brenda Dean (Claudia Jolly) is the first-ever female leader of a British trade union (SOGAT, one of the many acronyms bandied around at the time). Her members are print-workers on the presses of News International.
At the head of this group is Australian import Rupert Murdoch (Alan Cox), who values profit before fairness and whose mantra is basically do it quick and do it cheap. He is tired of being beholden to the union strikes at Fleet Street and has a plan.
In The Print asks the other actors in the cast (Alasdair Harvey, Georgia Landers, Jonathan Jaynes, and Russell Bentley) to multi-roll throughout the 90-minute runtime. Names come at us thick and fast, some gone in a flash.
Coats on pegs at the back of Peiyao Wang’s minimalist set – white tiles with an imposing, intruding ink blot – offer quick character changes, alongside accent switches.
Cox’s Murdoch is perhaps a little too chummy and sympathetic for a man who continues to control and manipulate the world’s media forty years on. He looks the part, but gets something of a free pass.
In The Print doesn’t quite do Brenda Dean justice. Her elevation to general secretary in 1985 was a major moment for women’s rights in a largely male-dominated industry and her later work in the House of Lords over 25 years cannot be so quickly dismissed as it is here.
However, as the Wapping dispute is in living memory for older audiences, it is interesting to see the decisions Khan and Salinsky have made for dramatic impact.
For those too young to remember, until Murdoch moved production from Fleet Street to Wapping his newspapers were produced on large printing presses, typeset and run overnight. Wapping brought in new digital systems – less labour, quick turnaround.
Deals were struck, conversations hidden behind closed doors. There was duplicity on both sides, and chauvinism too. Male union leaders like Tony Dubbins of the NGA and Eric Hammond of the EETPU don’t come off well.
In the newsroom, figures we still know today like Andrew Neil and Kelvin McKenzie offer pointed comments against the workers and the wider Labour movement, then one and the same with union power.
But it is Dean and Murdoch who provide the meat of the play in their presumably fictionalised conversations. It doesn’t quite give us a bird’s eye view of the tension between firebrand comrade and crafty capitalist, but it has its moments.
Josh Roche directs on this occasion, allowing some scenes to grow beyond the stage. Conflict, subterfuge, and frustration are the watchwords of this production.
I’m giving it 3 stars. It is an admirable production but misses the chance to deliver a truly solid, balanced account.
In The Print continues at the King’s Head until 3 May with tickets here.
Photo credit: Charlie Flint Photography