REVIEW: The Sun shines in Harrogate Dramatic Society’s sparkling newspaper drama

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In 1969, a brash Australian called Rupert Murdoch bought The Sun, an ailing broadsheet newspaper selling 800,000 copies a day.

Under new editor Larry Lamb, it set out to overtake the Daily Mirror, which sold four million copies.

James Graham turned the ensuing circulation war into the Broadway play Ink in 2017. Now Harrogate Dramatic Society has put its spin on this slice of British social history in a Tony Fennerty-directed production.

Starring Jamie Ruther as the disruptor Murdoch and Elliot Mathews as editor Larry Lamb, it shows The Sun rapidly assemble a team of misfits and chancers who respond to Murdoch’s order to create something “loud” to shake-up Fleet Street and surpass the Daily Mirror’s circulation figure within a year. “Who needs friends when you have readers,” says Murdoch.

Ruther, who skilfully captures Murdoch’s blend of humour and menace, and Mathews, who has a powerful and intense determination to succeed devoid of ethics, strike a powerful bond that is at the heart of the drama.

Clive Kirkham slips masterfully from derision to despair as the unctuous Daily Mirror editor Hugh Cudlipp and Chris Kendall delivers some wonderful deadpan one-liners as deputy editor Bernard Shrimsley.

With its outrageous headlines and unashamed populism, we see The Sun close the gap on its rival until Lamb embarks on a stunt that aims to topple the Daily Mirror — the introduction of the topless Page 3 girl. 

The play uses artistic licence to suggest it all happened within a year when it wasn’t until 1978 that The Sun overtook the Daily Mirror.

More importantly, it captures the excitement and excess of a tabloid newsroom, and the moral vacuum that emerged in the race to sell more newspapers.

Performed in the 60-seat Harrogate Studio Theatre, the production makes effective use of the tight space. Characters and scenes come and go, sometimes at a bewildering rate, as the pace never relents.

A video screen and a retro soundtrack add to the feel of the time. The final track, Sympathy with the Devil, by the Rolling Stones, aptly sums up this fascinating and fabulous production of a bygone time when hot metal printing, trade unions and Fleet Street were at the heart of British life.

Ink is on at Harrogate Studio Theatre until Saturday, May 2.