The Sun rises in a blaze of tabloid glory

YOU can always rely on London intellectuals to overstate the power of the popular Press, and it happens again in a sparky new play about the arrival of Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun in the late Sixties.

But you have to give this to the show: it catches some of the cartwheeling iconoclasm of life on a tabloid newspaper. James Graham’s Ink has a breathless first half as the young, slim Murdoch hires nononsense Yorkshireman Larry Lamb as editor for the title he bought from the Mirror group in 1969.

Lamb quickly assembles a ragged staff from ‘the spurned, the spited, the overlooked’. It is done with pace, pizzazz and trance-like dance moves. Bertie Carvel’s Murdoch is something of a Sphinx, prone to quizzical tilts of a long chin. Richard Coyle’s Lamb is the more dynamic figure, almost eating his way through cigarettes — a terrific turn.

In Rupert Goold’s tightly-drilled production, the plot motor is The Sun’s speedy challenge to the Mirror’s market supremacy. Could it overtake the Mirror within a year? If that means reporting on things close to home and persuading young women to pose topless, so be it. The play anguishes to a pious degree about The Sun’s Page Three stunnas.

The second half is darker, Lamb fighting with his conscience while Murdoch’s attention wanders to TV. And there lies the shortcoming of this enjoyable, peppery play: the idea that The Sun, or the Mail, has anything like the power of broadcasters, is nuts. Or as the Left says, ‘fake news’. A VERSION of this review appeared in earlier editions.