Here comes the Sun — and two titans of Fleet St
Bertie Carvel and richard Coyle are to portray the architects of Britain’s tabloid newspaper revolution.
Carvel, who played the demonic Miss trunchbull in the musical Matilda and the complex, cheating Simon Foster in hit TV drama Doctor Foster, will portray media mogul rupert Murdoch. (Fittingly, the actor has ink in his veins: his grandfather, robert Carvel, was a legendary political editor of the London evening Standard.)
Coyle, who starred in Coupling and successful shows on U.S. television, will play the pugnacious Larry Lamb in James Graham’s new play ink, about how the modernday Sun newspaper was launched in 1969. Both men were buccaneering outsiders, who became insiders as their influence grew.
rupert Goold, who will direct ink at the Almeida theatre where he is artistic director, said it was about ‘the birth of a kind of populism in this country that came out of the Sixties’.
He said Graham’s play reflected the spirit of the Sun at its funniest and most exuberant. ‘it’s full of boisterous energy,’ he added, and there are hints of the Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur newspaper comedy the Front Page.
Graham traces how Murdoch recruited Lamb as editor, through to the ‘new’ Sun’s first anniversary on November 17, 1970, when Lamb published a photograph of German model Stephanie rahn topless for all the world to see on Page 3.
Pearl Chanda, who appeared in Mike Leigh’s great film Mr turner, has been cast as rahn, who later worked under the name Stephanie Marrian. But while Graham’s drama harks back to the old ‘ink on your hands’ days of Fleet Street, there are plenty of elements that resonate still within the media landscape of today — a technique he employed with aplomb in his sublime political play this House.
ink will run at the Almeida from June 17, and if it works well in North London, it’s bound to head into the West end — and then, who knows, perhaps as far as Broadway, where from the conversations i’ve had here this week, it would be met with great interest.