HOLD THE FRONT PAGE, OR HANG ON A MINUTE..
Everyone (especially journalists) loves a drama about newspapers. Hot-tempered rackety bantering , stories urgently chased, rivalries and righteousness, secrets and lies. In Tracey Scott Wilson’s 2003 play, now updated (though without including social-media in its plot) we are in a hot and troubled American city. A young white man, heir to a Wall St fortune but working altruistically as a teacher in a rough black areas, has been shot dead when driving in the neighbourhood at night with his pregnant wife, wanting to show his parents a hip Brazilian restaurant, to prove that its not all scary black thugs. In other words, a perfect focus for white outrage: a goodie. His wife reports in a stark opening police scene that it was a big man, black, who shot him…
Projections and clips on Fleischl’s stark basketball-court set show that over weeks many black men have been arrested, roughly, with no conviction yet; the story rolls on, the wife harassed by media. Meanwhile we are in and out of a respected newspaper office. In a dept called Vanguard, devoted to reporting and speaking for the black community, tough old campaigner Pat (Lorraine Toussaint) and her colleague Neil ae settling in the rookie Yvonne. Who is black, but of another class: college-educated, sassy and ambitious and furious at the idea of being “a black reporter” rather than – well, a star reporter with a Pulitzer. She rather despises being sent on community stories (“my father” she says haughtily. ” never let us go to community centres”) . Letitia Wright plays Yvonne with almost cartoonishgly overdemanding gen-X arrogance, and is naturally furious not to be on the big murder story.
But at one of the despised community centres she finds a brilliant, multilingual, underrated social victim of her own generation. The girl Letitia tells a harsh back-story, and confides in her that with no other opportunities she’s in a violent girl-gang, who dress as men and may have shot the victim for a dare. Can Yvonne convince her boss Pat – who keeps whipping the adjectives out of her copy and demanding more professional facts – and Neil. He (in an understated, subtle performance by Ashley Thomas) never seems easy with her new story. But there’s something there: enough to put Yvonne in hospital at the rackety, shocking end of the first half.
Trevor Phillips, musing on this play, places it in a long tradition of American satire in which the cruel legacy of slavery makes white citizens too willing “to believe both the best and worst of our fellow countrymen” if they are black. He also relates it to the temptation to cultivate a sense of reparation due, exaggerating victimhood, diasadvantage and back-story brilliance and expecting to be believed. So this revival falls with dark, accidental aptness after the tragic end and unveiled deceptions of poor Jason Arday.
As this play goes on, there are those who believe easily and guiltily – not least Wilf Scolding’s Jeff, senior on the newsdesk and adoring boyfriend of Yvonne – and those who devoutly want to. No spoilers, but as it unfolds – jerkily, often in a series of staccato, shouted one-liners from figures and projections at every corner of the stage, and some clear dream-moments – expect some tremendous reckonings. And some unreprintable, now publicly unutterable, words from the lexicon of racial difference. The audience gasps. Toussaint’s Pat has a remarkable speech about her former years of battle and campaigning, and how the sisters like her were butts and victims of the angry bros but still marched for them next morning. When it comes to whether to let a big particular truth out, she feels that she’s owed the right not to…
It is not a perfect play, the ending not entirely satisfying; often the quest for authenticity blurs the narrative, (in the interval several were muttering in puzzlement). But Toussaint is remarkable in her grand intensity, and Wright manages to just about convince us of what Yvonne is hiding. Both deserve more.
nationaltheatre.org.uk to 24 October
rating 3
theatreCat 