'Ink'

[My play report on the current Broadway première of Ink is considerably longer than my usual reports.  The extra length—over half the post—is attributable to the review survey I always include at the end.  Ink attracted so much press attention when it came to New York City, more outlets covered it than I commonly find on the ’Net.  Review outlets that had given up on theater. reviewing. came out to play, including. the Daily News and the (Murdoch-owned) Post; I also hadn’t seen NY1 or WNYC post notices for a while..  Several websites I haven't seen in months  or years, like TheaterScene,com, also appeared on the scene.  I wonder of this is in response to a play about newspapering? 

[Rather than reduce the selection or trim the quotations, I decided to let the reporting of the critical reception exceed my self-imposed maximum length.  Though I don’t endorse it, ROTters may choose to stop after my performance evaluation.  I recommend you stay with the report, however, and see what the published reviewers had to say about this play.  ~Rick]

When Diana, my usual theater companion, agreed to partner with me in getting tickets for James Graham’s Ink, the British import about Rupert Murdoch’s precipitous entry into the London newspaper world, I had concerns.  I was leery about seeing the play because I was afraid I wouldn’t like it because I have such contempt for Murdoch’s politics and business practices that I was afraid I’d hate the character.  Oddly, for reasons you’ll see in a moment, I didn’t end up hating the Rupert Murdoch of the play—I did, however, dislike the play for dramaturgical reasons.

I’ll be brief on Ink for now: it’s long, it’s a mess, and I disliked it a lot.  For once, Diana and I agreed: it accomplishes nothing (and does it pretentiously).  I can’t figure out why the Manhattan Theatre Club would want to bring Ink to New York; I assume the theater actually sent someone to see it and didn’t just rely on London reviews. 

(The Evening Standard declared, “Hold the front page: a huge hit” and the Telegraph reported, “Once again finding a play for today in what looked like yesterday’s news, Graham has surely penned a super, soaraway smash.”  Even the London Times, now also owned by Murdoch, said that Ink is “a broncobuster of a play and Rupert Goold, the director, mostly lets it run riot, creating the feel of a newspaper office, organised chaos at the best of times.”  I glanced at Show-Score, and I was a little surprised that the New York City mounting of Ink got an average score of 80 and that 84% of the reviews were positive.  Given how both Diana and I felt, that’s very high.)

Ink was commissioned by London’s renowned Almeida Theatre and débuted there on 27 June 2017 for a limited run.  The world première was directed by Rupert Goold (King Charles III, 2014 – also at Almeida, where he’s artistic director) with Bertie Carvel as Rupert Murdoch and Richard Coyle as Larry Lamb.  The production closed on 5 August and transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre in the West End, opening on 19 September 2017, also for a limited run, closing on 6 January 2018.  The production was nominated as Best New Play for both a 2017 Evening Standard Award and a 2018 Olivier Award.  (Carvel won the Olivier Award for  Best Supporting Actor in a Play.) 

The play transferred to Broadway under the auspices of the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2019, starting previews on 2 April at MTC’s Broadway house, the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on 47th Street, west of Broadway; the U.S. première of Ink opened on 24 April and Diana and I saw the 8 p.m. performance on Friday, 7 June.  Originally scheduled to close its limited run on 9 June, the production has been extended three times (as of 12 June), first to 16 June, then to 23 June, and finally to 7 July.  Jonny Lee Miller (2012 Olivier Award for Best Actor, shared with Benedict Cumberbatch, for Frankenstein; CBS’s Elementary, 2012-19) took over the role of Larry Lamb from Coyle; Carvel remains as Rupert Murdoch.  The rest of New York company is largely made up of U.S. actors.  Ink was nominated for six 2019 Tony Awards, including Best Play, and won for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play (Carvel) and Best Lighting Design of a Play (Neil Austin); the play also received nominations for five 2019 Outer Critics Circle Awards, including Best New Broadway Play.

A description of the plot, such as it is, of Ink would be confusing and misleading, since the events that are depicted on stage aren’t literally what the play seems to be about.  Over two hours and 40 minutes (plus one intermission), Graham (Finding Neverland, 2014; Privacy, 2014) recounts Murdoch’s purchase of the failing Sun from Hugh Cudlipp (Michael Siberry), Chairman of the Mirror Group of newspapers, the holding company for the Daily Mirror and its companion papers, in January 1969, at a bargain-basement price.

                                                                                                            

Murdoch (Carvell), who’s 37 at the time the play begins, brings in Sir Alick McKay (Colin McPhillamy) to be to be his Deputy Chairman and hires 39-year-old Larry Lamb (Miller), the former northern editor of the Daily Mirror in Manchester, to be the first editor of the new Sun. 

Lamb, irate at having been passed over for promotion at the Mirror, where he’s a working-class Yorkshireman among Oxbridge toffs, demands a free hand if he takes the job, and Murdoch readily agrees.  In November, Lamb puts out the first edition of the Sun as a tabloid (like the Daily Mirror; the Sun had previously been a “stuck-up broadsheet,” like the London Times) and launches the new paper with radical changes in its format, coverage, and layout intended to appeal to a working-class readership.  The Daily Mirror was London’s best-selling daily paper at the time with 4.7 million readers and Murdoch makes it his priority, and therefore Lamb’s, for his new newspaper, with the nation’s lowest circulation—50,000 readers and going down—to catch up to the Daily Mirror’s circulation numbers within a year of his taking control.

The first part of the play is devoted to the obsessive make-over of the paper.  There’s a whirlwind of scenes—on film, it would be a montage of quick cuts—of his hiring writers and staff for the paper (“the spurned, the spited, the overlooked . . . a ship of undesirables,” in Murdoch’s words), holding brainstorming sessions to determine the kind of stories the new Sun will cover—such as sports, sex, crime, gossip, celebrities, the royals, and “the telly,” which, Lamb points out, people watch while most British papers ignore it as competition—and the best layout to catch the eye of the working man and woman.  Give them what they actually want, insists Lamb.  (The word for that is ‘pandering.’)

As act one unfolds, Lamb and photographer Beverley Goodway (Andrew Durand) shoot a topless Stephanie Rahn (Rana Roy) as the first “Page 3 Girl,” a regular feature of the Sun (which continued until 2015).  This episode is given greater prominence in Ink than any other aspect of the make-over, and it also gives Graham the opportunity to depict Murdoch’s discomfort with the gimmick as Lamb brushes his employer’s reservations aside.   As the act ends, the Sun is gaining on the Daily Mirror in circulation.  (In reality, the Sun didn’t catch up to the Mirror until 1978.)

The darker act two comprises the depiction of the paper’s coverage of one story, a gruesome crime saga that is close to home.  On 29 December 1969, Sir Alick’s wife, Muriel (Tara Summers), is kidnapped, mistaken for Anna Murdoch (Erin Neufer), Rupert Murdoch’s wife at the time.  Until this point, Sir Alick hasn’t been a major character in the play—and even through act two, his importance is down-played. 

The Sun’s sensational headlines on the front pages, reporting every grisly detail and presumption for the delectation of the readers, may even have hastened Lady McKay’s possible death.  Her body was never found, but the Sun reported that the authorities believed she was killed shortly after her abduction and her remains were fed to the pigs on the farm of the two kidnappers (a pair of Muslim Indo-Trinidadian immigrant brothers).  Graham’s Murdoch also makes ineffectual objections to covering this story, but Lamb argues that it’s what the Sun is meant to be.

Near the end of the play, Murdoch tells Lamb he’s on his way to New York.  “I’m thinking about buying a TV network over there,” he explains.  It may be the most ominous pronouncement Graham makes in Ink.

I can’t think of anything affirmative to say about the play or the production.  Ben Brantley was particularly high on the performances of the two leads in the New York Times (Carvel is “balletically precise” and Miller is “terrific”), but I was unimpressed, and in the case of Bertie Carvel, I found his performance of Rupert Murdoch oddly mannered, especially his voice.  It was either a strange casting choice (assuming that’s Carvel’s normal speaking voice—he’s often described in reviews as “chameleonic”) or a strange acting/directing decision (if it’s put on).  Both Diana and I had the same reaction.  The play opens in dim light and we were sitting above in the mezzanine, so we were looking down on the actors—that is, we couldn’t see the faces at that point, just the tops of heads.  When Carvel spoke, we both thought it was a woman on stage!

The play includes several elements of stylization, including the set (Bunny Christie, who also did the costumes), the lighting (Austin), and the fact that the actors break into song and dance for no apparent reason (Lynne Page is the choreographer and movement director and the sound design, including the period music selection, was by Adam Cork)—Ink’s not a musical—and in what’s supposed to be parts of the Sun newspaper offices, there’s an upright piano, complete with piano player (Kevin Pariseau, a member of the cast who also portrays a union worker in the pressroom and a TV interviewer), sitting down left.  (Don’t all newsrooms have pianos?  I have it on good authority that the New York Times has a baby grand.)

Anyway, that all smacks of stylization of some sort—non-Realism—but director Goold went with perfectly naturalistic performances from the cast.  That, aside from the odd break-out moments which seemed to have no dramatic or theatrical purpose, made Ink appear to be a straight history play about how Murdoch changed the face of newspapering, first in Britain and then in the rest of the world.  Except that that’s not really a two-hour-and-40-minute story, so there’s a lot of padding and very little revelation.  I mean, it’s not like no one knew what Murdoch did; it was no stealth mission!  

There are also a lot of actors (18, not counting understudies), including many who play several roles—so there are quite a few characters (22, plus “extras”).  Except for Murdoch and Lamb, however, none of them seems to have much to do.  We learn nothing about them as people—even Lamb and Murdoch—and they’re mostly there to do the newspaper work—there’s a linotypist, a printer, a copy boy, a photog, a few writers, and so on—but they aren’t characters in the drama, they’re employees of the paper (if you follow my distinction).  They don’t advance the plot, they get the paper out! 

That means there’s a lot of frenetic activity—the driving plot device is Murdoch’s vow for the Sun to outsell the Mirror within a year.  There are lots of scenes of layout changes, format changes, content changes—all to appeal to the working-class reader so it’s crass and low-brow, like Lamb’s invention of the Page 3 Girl, the topless woman in a photo that had no connection to any news story, just cheesecake).

All this activity takes place on a mountainous set that looks like a corner of an Aztec pyramid made of office furniture.  The desks, filing cabinets, work tables, and office chairs are all entirely naturalistic from the era of hot-lead typesetting, mostly gray metal and dark wood, but Christie has them stacked in receding levels up the up-stage right corner of the stage’s back wall.  The actors clamber up the stack—Lamb’s desk is at the very top level—and perform small scenes from there.  It’s like a monkey house at a zoo with a constructed “environment” for the specimens to caper on for our amusement.  

A relatively small space down-center and down-left is left free of clutter as an acting area (the piano is also located here) and a trap door with an elevator brings up set pieces for other locations such as the press room, a restaurant, and so on.   Behind all this is a wall of video screens that project bits of news stories, headlines, photos, and other visuals to underscore what’s happening in the script.  (The projection design is by Jon Driscoll.)

Austin’s film-noir lighting veers from dim and hazy (everyone smokes and there’s a bottle of booze—I imagine Scotch, given the play’s setting—is on every desk) to dark with bright spotlights on individual actors, like that opening scene I described earlier.  Like Christie’s scenic elements, her costumes are also utterly naturalistic and perfectly appropriate. 

Graham portrays Murdoch as a softie—he squirms at the Page 3 Girl feature and some of the coverage (such as “Knickers Week”), with Lamb as the guy who actually comes up with all the sleazy tactics that make the Sun a circulation giant (and simultaneously lowers the tone of newspapering on Fleet Street and beyond; as I reminded Diana, it led directly to Fox News, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, and Roger Ailes).  Murdoch’s conquest of Fleet Street is presented as a success story, not as a cautionary tale (though we may infer that meaning—especially when the newly minted press baron seems to foresee social media by predicting a world where consumers produce their own content and bids farewell to Lamb by telling him he’s off to New York because there’s a TV network there in which he’s interested.  (Rupert Murdoch purchased the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986; in 1985, he bought an interest in 20th Century Fox; and launched Fox News in 1996.)

The problem is, I don’t buy it.  A man who did what Murdoch did could not have had such a delicate constitution and a media mogul who meddled so heavily in his outlets’ editorial policies and practices could not have been as hands-off as Ink makes him out to be.  I don’t buy it for a New York second!  One question I had after the play was how much, if any, of the script is based on research and fact and how much is sheer invention.  

In a YouTube interview on the Almeida website (which I transcribed myself), Graham addressed this matter, though not definitively.  “I love history.  I love the process of researching historical events, meeting . . . interviewing people from the past and finding my way structurally and narratively through . . . these periods is great fun,” said the playwright.  “I probably had about two, three weeks of intense research—memoirs, interviews, documents—and then I started structuring, I started plotting and writing.”  So he did consult sources, though he doesn’t specify whether they provided Murdoch’s exact words or his demeanor in any given conversation.  In addition, Graham said he talked “to some Fleet Street people who were there around at the time and got them to check certain facts . . . .”  Then the actors put their oars in, too.  They “did a lot of research without me and watched clips online and read autobiographies,” recounted the playwright—and then they took off on their own, turning the parts into “characters and not real people.”

Furthermore, though Graham insisted, “I think reality will always be more interesting than anything you can make up,” he acknowledged, “I’m a great believer that . . . audiences aren’t stupid, that they’re very sophisticated and they know that this is a fictionalized representation; it’s not a factual presentation of anything.”  When the unidentified interviewer asked about addressing characters like Rupert Murdoch, about whom audience members might have preconceived opinions, the dramatist replied:

Personally, I think it’s my job to humanize these people, even people we strongly disagree with or people, as you say, we might come with a huge amount of baggage or prejudice or assumptions about someone—especially someone like Rupert Murdoch or a newspaper like the Sun . . . .  So I do think it’s my job and I enjoy the side of the work which plays devil’s advocate with that and tries to come at things at a weird angle, or come at people from a different angle.  And, of course, ultimately, someone can—and probably should—write a play that really goes hard for Murdoch and calls him to account.  That’s not gonna be my play.  I have more interest in trying to understand what motivates him—his vulnerabilities, his weaknesses, his flaws, his strengths even: that to me is what excites me as a writer.

Dominic Cavendish, the reviewer for the London Telegraph, spoke of Graham’s “interweaving of fact and fiction” in telling the story of Rupert Murdoch and the Sun, but the playwright emphasized his commitment to factuality in writing Ink: “For this play, which is about how the truth can be weaponized and fictionalized for political gain, I felt a very keen responsibility to not misrepresent the truth,” he said in another interview in New York’s Back Stage trade paper. 

Irrespective of any of this, however, no one wrote about Murdoch as a sweet guy with no agenda.  (Brantley called him “Mephistopheles”—which would make Lamb Faust—though the Financial Times said “not quite.”)  He’s universally portrayed, even in Ink, as an outsider—an Australian in Britain, seen as an interloper in the Fleet Street old boys’ club, “ignored by his fellow newspaper barons in the leather chairs at the London Press Club, who mock ‘The Aussie Sheep Farmer’ behind his back.” 

His interest wasn’t in journalistic standards or accurate reportage, but in making a profit.  “The numbers are what matter,” says Murdoch in the play.  A TV interviewer in the play remarks, “The news business then, for generations seen as a noble pursuit, [is now] no different from that of hawking soap, or shaving cream on a market stall, it’s solely about shifting volume.”  Graham makes Murdoch out to be skittish, even prudish, when it comes to covering certain subjects, but he’s ravenous when it comes to selling papers.  I still wonder it that dichotomy is accurate. 

James Graham was born on 8 July 1982 (he’ll be 37 next month) and grew up in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in northern England (coincidentally, less than 50 miles from the Yorkshire town in which Larry Lamb had been born and less than 70 miles from Manchester, where he’d been northern editor of the Daily Mirror).  The incipient playwright studied drama at the University of Hull in Yorkshire.  Aside from the Almeida Theatre, his work has been staged throughout the United Kingdom and around the world, at theatres including the Donmar Warehouse and the National Theatre in London; Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Wales; the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Public Theater and, now, the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City (the latter the playwright’s Broadway début). 

A cursory look at Graham’s oeuvre reveals that he often writes about politics and political issues in his plays and films.  Ink might seem to be an exception; even though Rupert Murdoch is well known today to use his media outlets to campaign vociferously for policies and candidates he supports—popular opinion is that the victory of the Conservative Party and the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979 was greatly aided by Murdoch’s support and the endorsement of the Sun—the play doesn’t cover this aspect of the mogul’s rise to influence.  Graham has acknowledged, however, that part of his inspiration for writing Ink was his observation of the press coverage of, first, Brexit, which Murdoch backed, and then Donald Trump’s candidacy for President of the United States in 2015 and 2016.

(The Murdoch-owned New York Post endorsed Trump in the New York State Republican primary and, though it withheld its endorsement in the general election, the conservative tabloid gave the candidate pages of positive coverage throughout the campaign—and bashed his opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, as often as it could manage.  The Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch’s News Corp also owns, eschews political endorsements—it hasn’t endorsed a candidate since 1928—but it did generously cover Trump, a businessman, after all: the Journal’s target audience.)

Graham’s first professional play, Albert’s Boy, was produced in 2005 by the Finborough Theatre in London, where Graham became playwright-in-residence.  His first major play, This House, was commissioned in 2012 by the Royal National Theatre, where it was critically and commercially acclaimed, transferred to the larger Olivier Theatre, and was nominated for the Olivier Award for Best New Play.  This House, a play set in the latter half of the 1970s and depicting events surrounding the House of Commons, was revived in 2016 and ran for two years, first in the West End and then on a national tour.

In 2018, Graham won his first Olivier Award, for Labour of Love, the story of a Labour MP over 25 years in office, as best new comedy (Ink was nominated in the same year).  He wrote the book for the Broadway musical Finding Neverland (2014), and his 2014 play, Privacy, like Ink, came to New York City, produced by the Joseph Papp Public Theater at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in 2016.

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Graham’s debut feature film X+Y (renamed A Brilliant Young Mind) premiered in 2015, and he has written numerous British television dramas, including the TV films Coalition (which won the Royal Television Society award for Best Single Film; 2015) and Brexit: The Uncivil War, which aired on Channel 4 in 2019.

In June 2018, Graham was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its 40 Under 40 initiative.  In January 2019, the writer’s life and work were the subjects of a documentary as part of the Imagine series on BBC One.  In May 2019, This House was voted Play of the Decade in Bloomsbury Publishing’s “60 Years of Modern Plays” public survey.

As I’ve indicated, Ink’s critical reception in London, both at the Almeida and then in the West End, was largely enthusiastic.  In New York, Show-Score (as I hinted above) showed that the press here was of a similar disposition.  I reported earlier that the site gave Ink an average rating of 80, based on a survey of 50 published reviews.  I also reported that 84% of the New York reviews were positive, but the rest of the breakdown, as of 14 June, was that 12% were mixed and just 4% were negative.  There were seven 95’s (amNewYork, New York Stage Review, and the U.S. edition of the Financial Times among them), Show-Score’s top score, followed by eight 90’s, including CurtainUp, Gotham Playgoer, and NY1 television news, among others.  The two low scores on the site were Time Out New York with a 40 and The Wrap with 45.  My round-up will cover 28 notices.

In amNewYork, Matt Windman described Ink as “a fast-paced and provocative thriller brimming with rowdy comic banter and prescient social commentary” and Goold’s production as “gripping.”  Windman reported that the “production moves fluidly and is consistently, engrossing, entertaining and disturbing.”  In the end, the amNY reviewer, whose notice was one of the highest scorers on Show-Score with a rating of 95, dubbed Ink, a “magnificent new English drama.”  Barbara Schuler wrote in her “Bottom Line” in Long Island’s Newsday: “A fascinating look at how Rupert Murdoch went about building his media empire.”  She described the play as “engrossing” and declared, “If ever a story was ripped from the headlines, it’s this one.”  Schuler pondered a question he found personally (and professionally) significant:

It’s challenging to review a play that lays bare the inner workings of your profession.  Will anyone care about the intricacies of coming up with the perfect front-page layout or the machinations of creating a lead printing plate for the nightly press run?  Turns out in the right hands, it’s all kind of fascinating, especially when you add in spot-on, mile-a-minute performances from Bertie Carvel . . . and Jonny Lee Miller . . . .  Besides, as the two men on a mission frequently point out, it’s a darn good story (that being the primary answer to the question we started with).

“The large cast, directed with an energizing touch of theatrical fantasy by Rupert Goold, does a fine job portraying the assorted editors and writers,” reported the Newsday reviewer, though she  found “their occasional breaking into song is a touch unrealistic in my world (unless you count the annual holiday party).” 

The Times’ Brantley prefaced his review with an portentous question: “Did you hear the one about the guy who sells his soul to the devil?  How about the story in which an entire country does the same thing?”  Assuaging his U.S. readers, “[D]on’t worry, uneasy Americans, it’s not about you,” the Timesman went on, “These cautionary tales intersect to highly invigorating effect in James Graham’s ‘Ink.’”  He felt that Goold staged the play “with vaudevillian flair and firecracker snap” that “turn[s] the cast into a (sometimes literal) conga line, wriggling to an infectious, forward-moving beat that obviates doubts and scruples.”  The Times review-writer found, “The largely American, multicast ensemble deploys varyingly confident British accents.  But it does well in sustaining the play’s propulsive momentum.” 

In New York’s Daily News, a paper from whom we haven’t heard much with respect to theater, Chris Jones wondered who Rupert Murdoch really is.  He proclaimed that “as they like to say at Fox News, the new Broadway play ‘Ink’ mostly reports the facts. You decide, dear reader, you decide.”  Jones added, “At least you will have fun doing the deciding” as he compared Ink with Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s Front Page (see my report of a 2016 revival, posted on 16 November 2016), noting both plays’ “humorous relish.”  He called Ink a “gloriously nostalgic catnip for a vanished era of newsprint,” which Goold “directed with palpable if unsubtle joy.”  Comparing Lamb to Icarus (the mythological Greek who flew too close to the sun with wax wings), the Daily News reviewer labeled Ink “a bit of a morality play.”  (In a compound error no one apparently caught in editing, Jones kept calling the playwright James “Gresham” and the director Rupert “Gould.”)

Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post (owned by Rupert Murdoch, as Oleksinski disclosed, and awarded a score of 90 on Show-Score) called Ink an “exciting new play,” a “down-and-dirty dramedy,”  and “unexpectedly seductive.”  The Postman added that “nothing about” Ink “is ever less than rousing,” and the production “is hoisted even higher by director Rupert Goold, doing his best work since the similarly irreverent ‘King Charles III,’ by mixing in music and dance for a raging party vibe.”  In the end, Oleksinski concluded, “‘Ink’ is way more than just a bit of fun.”

In the U.S. edition of the Financial Times, another notice scored at 95, Max McGuinness asserted that Ink “evokes the demise of a deferential, collectivist social order and the emergence of a brash, individualistic culture epitomised by the rise of Margaret Thatcher.”  Dubbing the play a “political allegory” and “mesmerisingly accomplished,” it “is directed by Rupert Goold with characteristic razzmatazz.” 

Labeling Ink as “a big, loud, aggressively funny play that turns the newsroom clock back to 1969,” Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal (also owned by Murdoch) links it to the “newspaper movie [which] used to be an established genre in Hollywood, and a consistently popular one,” naming several classics from the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s.  The genre’s passé now for the most part (Teachout sort of ignores The Paper, 1994; Spotlight, 2015; The Post, 2017, and the granddaddy of recent newspaper films, All the President’s Men, 1976—plus a few others in the past 25 years), but the Journalist suggested that their passing is a good reason that “anyone who knows anything about the raffish history of print journalism will delight in James Graham’s ‘Ink.’”  Teachout reported that the play, “[s]taged at a headlong hurtle . . . and featuring excitingly raucous performances by [Bertie] Carvel and Jonny Lee Miller . . . ‘Ink’ moves at so brisk a gallop that the intermission break will catch you off guard.” 

Teachout had a similar question about the portrayal of Rupert Murdoch to mine:

It’s no secret that the real Mr. Murdoch (who is the executive chairman of News Corp, which owns both the Sun and this paper) is widely regarded by Britain’s chattering classes as the devil incarnate.  This makes it downright flabbergasting that Mr. Graham has portrayed him with seemingly genuine sympathy in “Ink.”  How is such a thing possible, especially given the fact that the British stage, like the American stage, is a monoculture in which pretty much everyone lists to the left?

The Journal’s review-writer’s explanation?

The answer is that “Ink” is not so much about politics, or even journalism, as it is about the British class system, and specifically about the proclivity of bowler-hatted toffs in old-school ties to sneer at the lesser breeds who read, write, edit and (ahem) publish tabloids. 

“That’s what makes ‘Ink’ so surprising,” affirmed Teachout:: “It cuts sharply across the lines of traditional politics, foreshadowing the 21st-century explosion of populist rage that is convulsing parties of the right and left.”  The actors, the reviewer reported, “generate enough energy among them to mostly overcome the structural weaknesses of ‘Ink,’ which succumbs to melodrama in the second act, followed by a coda whose sum-it-all-up sanctimony sits uneasily alongside the brash vitality of the first act.”  He concluded, “What we have here, then, is a refreshing piece of intelligent, mostly unpreachy entertainment, a commodity that’s grown steadily harder to find on Broadway in recent seasons.  Not only is ‘Ink’ fun, but it’ll make you think—if you let it.”

Christopher Kelly of the Newark Star-Ledger, called Ink an “exuberant and entertaining drama” on NJ.com and determined that it “does something very canny: it makes a largely liberal Broadway audience root for conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.”  (Clearly it didn’t work for me!)  Kelly complained that the play’s “overlong and occasionally baggy, and its ultimate unwillingness to take a moral stand on its characters’ actions feels like a cop out.”  He continued, “As directed by Rupert Goold . . ., it’s tricked out with gimmickry that distracts more than it enhances—” wondering, “I’m really not sure, for instance, we need a quasi-musical number to show us how Lamb assembled his editorial team.”  On the other hand, the New Jersey reviewer found, “That ‘Ink’ keeps and at times rivets our attention is because . . .  it turns the details of the business world into the stuff of rip-roaring melodrama.” 

“Graham effectively turns the formation of the paper into a battle of working-class lads and lasses against the stuffy, champagne-liberal establishment,” David Cote characterized Ink in the New York Observer.  This, reported Cote, enables “the audience to suppress its collective gag reflex at the thought of rooting for Murdoch and his cronies.”  The production is “directed with nonstop gusto” and this all “makes for an entertaining first half,” but “the play grows moodier” after the Sun sees circulation success.  The Observer reviewer complained that “Graham churns out meaty dialogue and keeps things moving, but there’s a sense that he’s often rushing to check off the next journalistic milestone.”  He added, “The action seldom slows down long enough to dig into any of the characters’ back stories.”  In his final analysis, Cote found, “Still, due to Goold’s brassy, athletic staging and a fine ensemble, Ink is never boring.”  He concluded:

Still, too much of Ink wants to dazzle and seduce; it strenuously avoids passing judgement on what Murdoch’s revolution would bring about 50 years later, keeping its prime villain almost in shadow.  The cover grabs you with buzz words, grisly photos, and 72-point screaming headlines.  But turn the page, and you find yourself wanting more news, less flash. 

Calling Ink “exciting” in the New Yorker, Hilton Als demurred slightly and added that “more specifically,” it “should excite something in the audience, if only a greater understanding of how certain genres work, or don’t.”  The he complained that “‘Ink’ is your fairly standard slice-of-life drama, but one that’s been tricked out to feel more contemporary than it really is.”  Als concluded his opening statement by stating: “How the playwright, James Graham, and the director, Rupert Goold, achieved this effect accounts for what’s interesting about the nearly three-hour drama—and for why it fails.”  The New Yorker reviewer identified two “problems” with Ink; the first is that “it’s filled with allusions and references to the British character and news culture that don’t translate to the U.S.” and the second “is that Graham never really tells us who Murdoch is, so we’re left to rely on what we’ve read.”  Als wraps up his assessment of Ink by concluding:

Graham gets as close to his characters as he can, but those wily, bullheaded subjects weren’t fashioned from his bones.  Perhaps he’s too intelligent for them; his piece certainly builds nicely, weaving into a traditional narrative little asides about the show-business aspect of tabloid life.  One could make an easy argument for “Ink” as a treatise on the rotten rise of celebrity culture, but its intellectual properties aren’t that expansive.

On Vulture, the website for New York magazine, Sara Holdren felt that Ink serves as “an interesting . . . case study” of “self-made giants of the market.”  It “use[s] humorous, highly structured writing to pick apart the hubristic growth of a modern moneymaking empire” and is “unashamedly built to be [an entertainment].”  Holdren warned, however, that “that task can get easily sidetracked.”  She continued, though: “Ink, though it resists moralizing, is at least interested in asking moral questions,” adding, “And as directed with plenty of pop and fizz by Rupert Goold, and driven by the compelling performances of Bertie Carvel and Jonny Lee Miller, it’s both playful and thoughtful—not, perhaps, a kick-in-the-guts play, but an energetic, respectable handshake.”  Holdren felt that “Ink is perhaps on the back-heavy side, with all of the play’s weightiest, densest episodes shoved into Act Two”; the first half “is dedicated to the amusing, Ocean’s Eleven–like assembling of The Sun’s ragtag team.” 

When a show doesn’t know what it’s about, it starts asking itself existential questions,” cautioned Helen Shaw of Time Out New York, in the review that rated lowest (40) on Show-Score.  Shaw expanded on this point: “‘What makes a good story?’ a character might ask another character, portentously.  This is exactly the moment the theatergoer should start worrying.  The word story is to bad plays what the word family is to bad action films: a sign of vapidity taking itself seriously.”  In the play, the woman from TONY pointed out, the answer Lamb gives to that question is the journalistic standards, conventions which he and the Sun will pretty much ignore or distort; what Shaw’s answer was is: “A good dramatic story, though, has more than the newsroom basics.  It has pressure, argument, surprise, suspense.”  Then she asked, “So why is there no drama here?”  She explained that “although Graham labors hard to humanize Lamb with shadows of self-doubt, this psychological element is oversold and unconvincing, and we’re left with a long show about a foregone conclusion,” continuing:

Taken-from-the-record plays often have this problem: We know how things turned out.  We know what a Murdochian world looks like because we live in it, and once the show has answered the question of how did we get here (they did it to sell papers), there’s still two hours and 20 minutes to go.

“Director Rupert Goold knows that Ink needs ginning up, and boy, he ladles on the gin,” the TONY reviewer determined.  “This production is loud, and it’s lit like a rock show.  It has the chiaroscuro intensity of a C. S. Lewis morality play about the Devil.”  Shaw felt, “Goold may think he’s rescuing a dry procedural by turning it into hyperactive, overamplified children’s theater for adults, but he’s actually administering the killing blow.  His dynamic control is shot.” 

In the Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney used his “Bottom Line” to label Ink as “The Decline of Western Civilization for Dummies.”  He began his assessment of the play with a critique of the director’s style:

Rupert Goold is the king of bells and whistles.  The English showman rarely resists the urge to infuse a text with kinetic energy by drawing from his ample bag of dynamic stage tricks.  That can work to a production’s advantage . . . .  Elsewhere, though, the gilded Goold touch can expose the shortcomings of a mediocre play.

This, Rooney contended, is the case with Ink.  The HR reviewer characterized the play as “basically a semi-dramatized Wikipedia page with two satisfyingly fleshed-out characters in a crowded field, and two correspondingly compelling performances competing for attention with a load of directorial froufrou.”  Rooney, however, does acknowledge, “For anyone with a nostalgic interest in the bygone days of print journalism, there’s lots to enjoy in Goold’s imaginative presentation of the nuts-and-bolts process of putting out a daily paper. . . .  Everything from editorial content to headline-writing to layout and even distribution is depicted with rollicking energy and humor.” 

The review-writer also found, “There’s entertainment value in the glee with which Larry and his team rip into the noble traditions of establishment print journalism” and “Goold stages it all with a putting-on-a-show adrenaline rush, even if it’s somewhat undercut by lack of character shading in the newsroom figures.”  He admitted, “The goal of hurdling the Mirror’s circulation lead in a year provides the drama with a ticking clock.  But the overlong play spends too much time spinning its wheels.”  Then Rooney affirmed, “The juicy element that finally livens up the sluggish second act is a shocking development likely to be unfamiliar to most American audiences.”  

He was referring to  the coverage of the kidnapping of Muriel McKay, which “also strikes at the dramatic crux of the matter—how uncomfortable ethical questions were brushed aside for the sake of sales figures.”  He asserts, though, that “this is also where the structural imbalance in Graham’s writing becomes problematic,” explaining that “going from such a chilling crime to a drawn-out scene agonizing over the decision to introduce topless ‘Page 3 girls’ just seems anticlimactic.”  Rooney concluded by asserting that “Graham’s storytelling instincts too often get dulled here, and Goold’s frantically busy direction can’t disguise that.”

Frank Rizzo labeled Ink “[g]arish, lurid and brash” in Variety, pronouncing the plays “the theatrical equivalent of its subject.”  In explanation, Rizzo wrote, “Like the tabloid, it feels unsubstantial, rushed and icky.”  The review-writer warned that

those expecting a psychological study of a titan, deep analysis of the marketplace, or personal stories resulting from an industry’s seismic shift will find the play lacking, as it favors boisterous pronouncements and mythologizing over the human touch.  Think of it as “Network” for ink-stained wretches.

“‘It’s all about a good story,’” reported Rizzo in Murdoch’s words, “and it’s a dandy one here that whizzes to its conclusion in a staging directed with deadline urgency by Rupert Goold.”  He continued, “In the early scenes there’s a ‘Front Page’ energy, verve and cheek to proceedings,” and found, “At first the David-and-Goliath story is fun to watch as it unfolds, upsetting the tut-tutting press powers.”  But then, “the underdog turns rabid, [and] James Graham’s play comes up short, and instead of digging deeper into the story, Goold and company simply crank up the speed and volume.” 

In the electronic media, things were much the same as the print outlets.  On NY1, the 24-hour all-news channel for Spectrum cable subscribers, Roma Torre asserted that Ink “makes for a fascinating study” of Rupert Murdoch’s “earliest days as a wannabe newspaper publisher.”  Torre, whose notice scored a 90, Show-Score’s second-highest rating for Ink, described the play as “a sprawling, heady, hilarious David and Goliath story that may just make you root for the giant.”  Graham “resists turning Murdoch into a villain,” explained Torre.  “Rather he portrays the mogul as a smart businessman with a chip on his shoulder and a ruthless underdog streak.”  As for the production, director Goold’s “vision for the play is an inspired antic Marx Brothers style romp.” 

On WNYC radio, an outlet of National Public Radio, Jennifer Vanasco reported that Ink is “beautifully directed,” though it’s also “often slow.”  The play “gets at something important: Is there a way of overturning the old order which, as Murdoch says, is designed by people in power to keep them there,  without devolving into a fascist populism?  ‘Ink’ doesn't have the answers, but it sure asks the questions.”  Vanasco felt that Ink “never explores ‘the why’”—the last of the five W’s of journalism—“either: It never examines why Murdoch does what he does.  Instead, it . . . explore[s] the moral lines journalists face and show what happens when they cross them.” 

Robert Hofler on The Wrap, the website that got Show-Score’s second-lowest rating (45), begins his notice with a cautionary statement:

If you don’t already appreciate “Citizen Kane,” the unnecessary first act of “Ink” will make you marvel at Orson Welles’ economy and wit.  Kane’s creation of a tabloid is fun, insightful and, most important, Welles tells the story quickly.  Graham, on the other hand, shows Lamb handpicking each staff member, and each portrait of these hardened journos is a cliché.

“Much more tiresome,” added Hofler, “is Graham’s need to show how newspapers were printed in 1969.”  Even Goold’s “flashy musical-comedy direction can’t disguise the fact that there’s no drama in the first act of ‘Ink.’”  Hofler continued: “Act 2 is an improvement because a story finally emerges . . .  and Lamb plays it up big.”  The reviewer concluded: “To use a newspaper term, ‘Ink’ is a puff piece.”  Calling the play “frequently exciting, if overlong,” Samuel L. Leiter labeled Goold’s staging “strikingly distinctive” on Theatre’s Leiter Side.  Leiter included, “Ink overextends itself, and could use some editorial trimming.  That, however, is not to deny that it remains “a good fuckin’ story.”

On CurtainUp, Elyse Sommer characterized Ink in another 90-rated review, as “one of the most entertaining and fun to watch plays that London has sent our way.”  She affirmed, “To his great credit, the playwright has managed . . . to tell a ripping good newspaper story” and, continued Sommer, “Thanks to . . . Rupert Goold, . . . [the] play has been staged with stupendous originality and style and is performed with gusto by a large cast.”  The CU reviewer also found, “Carvel's interpretation” of Murdoch “is indeed fascinating and fun to watch.” 

Mark Shenton of New York Theatre Guide declared Ink “a stunning achievement, both in riveting playwriting from Graham and thrilling stagecraft from Goold,” earning his review a 95 from Show-Score, its highest rating for the play.  Shenton reported that “the cinematic dynamism and propulsion that each provide turns a play about a pivotal moment in the history of British newspaper journalism into something akin to a thriller.”  Playwright Graham “expertly marshals the human drama behind these headlines—and it is properly galvanised [sic] by a pair of towering performances” from Carvel and Miller, who are “both spellbinding.”  Shenton ended by proclaiming that Ink “makes for top theatre.”

JK Clarke on Theater Pizzazz warned potential theatergoers that “while the details of the story may be salacious, they are not as shocking or revelatory as the playwright would have you believe.”  He suggested, “Had Ink been written/produced in the 1980s it might have been more compelling.  Tabloids were going full speed and slander was considered part of the game . . . .  But the advent of the Internet has made dirty journalism seem quaint.”  The NYTG reviewer reported, “Ink is blessed with a look and feel that give it a burst of newsroom energy without it being drab.”  Then he complained, “But Goold’s staging is often awkward, with prolonged darkened breaks between scenes or odd dance numbers that didn’t make sense in the context of this play,” adding, “Furthermore, there were scenes that could have easily been trimmed or cut to reduced [sic] the overlong two hours and 45 minute run time.”  Clarke acknowledged, however, “The play is ultimately rescued by Graham’s sharp, crisp dialog performed by a terrific cast” and concluded, “Overall, it makes for a compelling and entertaining night out at the theater that may or may not teach you a thing or two.”

On the Daily Beast, Tim Teeman described Ink as “uneven, intriguing . . . with two excellent performances by Jonny Lee Miller and Bertie Carvel.”  Teeman also felt that “it also seeks to impose a measured, piquant view upon its own sepia frame.”  The DB reviewer was surprised that “that this play is more celebration than moral inquisition.”  Confessing that he worked for Murdoch’s Times of London, Teeman seems to regret that the play “doesn’t put Murdoch on trial” and that “it is a mainly sympathetic origin story.”  The review-writer pointed out, “The first half of Ink is romp-ish; a kind of ‘making the band’ as Lamb assembles his troupe of launch issue journalists.”  The second half of the play is “overwrought, . . . constructed around two early Sun flashpoints,” the Page 3 Girls and the kidnapping of Muriel McKay.  The latter event, Teeman found, “adds another structural instability to the play itself, which up to this point has not focused on Alick McKay or his wife—so why should we care?”  Both these aspects of the play “are presented as telling moral quandaries, but come across as more convenient plot padding.”

Fern Siegel dubbed Ink “a fast-paced chronicle of ambition and anger” on TheaterScene.com, “a nasty foreshadowing of what’s to come.”  Graham’s play is “a compelling, even frightening tale of anarchy and mission, but once its intentions are clear, it’s less a commentary and more first-year bio.”  Siegel found that Goold “is excellent at creating an upbeat, celebratory mood in act one” and she praised Page’s choreography, Christie’s set and costumes, Austin’s lighting, Cork’s sound, and Driscoll’s projections which “greatly enhance the experience”; Miller “is exciting to watch.”  In conclusion, Siegel thought, “It’s amazing audiences aren’t screaming stop the presses!”

“Undeniably entertaining and unapologetically theatrical, Ink slaps a new headline on an old chestnut,”  asserted Zachary Stewart on TheaterMania, continuing with the question, “but will its viewers emerge from the darkness . . . enlightened about a process that still blindsides so many?”  Stewart characterized the “jittery drama” thus:

Much of Graham’s restless script plays out like every American sports movie from the past half-century: An aggrieved but talented coach assembles a ragtag team of misfits that, through unconventional methods, improbably comes from behind to win the championship. . . .   Broadway audiences might roll their eyes at this formula, but it constitutes a powerful and dangerous myth—the kind that destroys industries and topples governments.

Goold’s production “is unsubtle and gets the point across,” asserted Stewart.  “The production is the real star,” declared the TM reviewer, naming the entire design team for compliments.  “This is theater for the age of Twitter, in which there is always something shiny and outrageous coming down the feed,” added the review-writer.  Stewart characterized Ink as “a timely, if not particularly original, new play.  That’s fine: Some stories bear repeating until we finally hear them.”

James Wilson of Talkin’ Broadway labeled Ink “dazzling and gripping” and “considers the collateral damage of” Murdoch’s “philosophy” of giving the readers what they want and ultimately letting them produce their own content.  “Unfortunately,” Wilson found, “the play stumbles somewhat in the second act as it pursues the ramifications of this precis.  The narrative gets bogged down with a bit too much moralizing.”  Otherwise, “Ink is crackling good theatre.  It is a smart, expertly constructed play and infused with rapid-fire dialogue reminiscent of a 1930s comedy.”  Under Goold’s direction, “the production is stunningly theatrical.  In addition to the excellent ensemble of actors, there are eye-popping visuals by a team of designers.” 

(Just a note of congrats for Wilson.  Among all the other reviews I read, most writers compared Murdoch and Lamb to Mephistopheles and Faust or a pair of Machiavellis.  David and Goliath came up, but that was for the Fleet Street classists and Murdoch-the-Outsider.  Wilson was the only reviewer I saw who used Sweeney Todd, that other demonic denizen of Fleet Street, and Mrs. Lovett for his analogy.  Not inaptly, either.)

Once again, New York Stage Review posted two notices.  Elysa Gardner stressed “Graham’s sharp, rapid-fire dialogue” and “Goold’s characteristically flashy direction (a good fit for the subject matter).”  Praising the “superb cast,” NYSR Writer A concluded, “If it’s too late to kill the beast Murdoch has nourished over decades, Ink at least encourages us to reflect on its growth—and, if we’re fair, our own accountability in that.”

In the other NYSR review, which was another of Show-Score’s 95’s, Steven Suskin asked, “Can Graham, and director Rupert Goold, expect us to root for [Murdoch]?”  Suskin decided, “No, they don’t expect us to; they more or less force us to.”  The playwright, observed Suskin, “is interested only in the beginnings, and it makes a roisterous tale.”  NYSR Writer B labeled Graham’s play “spectacularly dynamic” and Goold’s “production team is all-round superb.”  At the end of the play, Murdoch tells Lamb, “It’s a good story.  People like stories.” Suskin affirmed, “It is, and we do.”

On TheaterScene.net (not to be confused with TheatreScene.com, quoted above), David Kaufman dubbed Ink a “smart new play” which “establishes its sly sense of humor in the . . . opening scene, when Lamb asks Murdoch if he likes ‘Rules’ and Murdoch replies, ‘So long as I’m the one making them,’ only for Lamb to say that he’s referring to the oldest restaurant in London, called ‘Rules’ where they’re having dinner.”  Kaufman cautioned readers, “Despite its concerns with newspapers and newsrooms, Ink is nothing like other journalism plays, such as The Front Page”—a play to which many other reviewers compared Ink.  “Graham’s otherwise realistic script takes on elements of performance art whenever director Rupert Goold has his many players . . . suddenly dancing with choreographed movements.”  The TS.net reviewer reported in his final assessment, “In the final analysis, Ink is too swift and too slick for its own good—or should I say, for our good?”  He complained, “Even if you know some of the details it traffics in, they zoom by at such a rapid clip, that it’s sometimes hard to follow.  Director Goold is to be faulted for the pace, no less than the playwright, Graham.”  Kaufman admitted that “some of [the play] was lost on this particular reviewer.”