Guerrilla performance is not something you associate with the National Theatre, but the rollicking tabloid satire Great Britain was rehearsed in secret and publicly announced only a few days before it actually opened. They couldn’t even print up any programmes.
“The problem wasn’t so much defamation as contempt of court,” explains its writer, Richard Bean, in between rehearsals for his next venture, a musical of the film Made in Dagenham. “We couldn’t say a thing until the phone-hacking trial was over. The worst thing was that if the trial had collapsed, we wouldn’t have been able to do the show at all, and everyone’s efforts would have been wasted.”
It’s on such gambles that subsidised theatre should thrive. Who would have guessed that a set-less play about an autistic boy (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), a puppet show about a boy and his horse (War Horse), or the revival of an 18th-century farce (One Man, Two Guvnors, adapted by Bean) would become international smash hits? Despite the lack of advance publicity, Great Britain sold out its whole summer run and is transferring on 9 September to the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
The versatile Lucy Punch is replacing Billie Piper in the lead role of the ambitious, ruthless, amoral and devastatingly charismatic news editor Paige Britain, and about 15 minutes have been trimmed to make it lighter and tighter, “as any playwright would, given the chance,” says Bean. “Anton Chekhov if he had the opportunity would be taking an hour out of his plays, wouldn’t he?”
The real-life phone-hacking scandal which forced the closure of the News of the World and the imprisonment of former editor Andy Coulson is the motor for the play. It begins as a bit of laugh, a “secret power”, as Paige puts it, for scooping rivals, and descends in the second half into tragedy. But Bean hits at many more tabloid targets than that, with, as any journalist can tell you, uncanny accuracy.
Paige’s defiant admission: “That’s what we do, we go out and destroy people’s lives” is a direct quotation from former News of the World editor Greg Miskiw. When Paige volunteers to don a cleaner’s outfit to steal a rival’s scoop from the printer, readers of Piers Morgan’s memoirs will recall his claims that a young Rebekah Brooks (later editor of the News of the World) did just that to her sister paper, the Sunday Times. And the foul-mouthed editor whose staff motivational techniques include designating a “Cunt Of The Week” and threatening unconventional anatomical uses for a pineapple is immediately recognisable as the legendary ex-Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. He won’t sue, says Bean, because he was happy to be used as a model.
“I went out for a couple of nights with Kelvin. I’m a bit of a wet liberal but I found myself really warming to him. He’s very generous, incredibly funny, absolutely dead straight and seemingly honest and open and transparent. He came to see the show, and complained that his character wasn’t disgusting enough!”
Perhaps with defamation suits in mind, other characters cannot be pinned down to a single source. Just to make extra-sure we can’t think Paige Britain is based on Brooks, who was innocent of phone-hacking, Bean wrote in a blameless supporting character who more closely resembles her. He got that idea from Monty Python, who featured the real Jesus briefly in The Life of Brian lest audiences mistake Brian for the Messiah, rather than just a very naughty boy. No, if Paige is based on anyone, reveals Bean, it’s Shakespeare’s Richard III.
“The bad guys always have the best lines,” laughs Bean. “We used Richard III quite a lot during writing and in rehearsal as a model anti-hero. He breaks the fourth wall, he’s cheeky, he’s charming, and nowadays often played almost comedically.”
Bean didn’t have to do too much research, as he had already absorbed a wealth of stories over the years from journalist friends. One thing did surprise him: the extent to which the News of the World and the police were “basically in bed together”, a metaphor he made literal in the play when Paige seduces the Met’s second in command. Bean also devised a scene in which the police collude with Paige’s tabloid on an arrest, delaying it so that they could make the front page.
“Some people challenged that in rehearsals as too far-fetched. And then, of course, the police and the BBC do something similar with Cliff Richard! Sometimes you think you’ve gone too far, and then it actually happens.”
Great Britain transfers to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London, on 9 September 2014.
