Ink

A-

Manhattan Theatre Club is presenting the American premiere of James Graham’s (Privacy, This House) London hit with an all-new cast except for Olivier winner Bertie Carvel (Matilda: The Musical) as Rupert Murdoch. When I looked it up, I was surprised to learn that his award was for Best Supporting Actor. I had wrongly assumed that the role of Murdoch would be the lead. After seeing the play, I now understand that the play is less about Murdoch than I expected and more about the team that led The Sun in the year after Murdoch’s purchase in 1969. The role of Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller; After Miss Juile, Frankenstein), the editor Murdoch hired, is at least as prominent as Murdoch’s. The first act is a worthy successor to The Front Page as a love letter to the lost heyday of newspaper publishing. The amazing set by Bunny Christie (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) features dozens of metal desks piled high and a curved back wall made of rolls of newsprint on which images are projected. The center of the stage is a smallish platform that rises from below with different settings. A tour for a new apprentice shows us the arduous process of setting and printing the paper. I wondered why there was a piano at the side of stage. I got my answer midway through the first act. As Lamb assembles his staff, the cast suddenly bursts into song and dance. The segment works so well that I found myself wishing that the creators had gone all the way and written a musical. The second act traces the newspaper’s first year and the increasingly dubious strategies Lamb pursues to fulfill his faustian promise to Murdoch to overtake The Mirror in sales. He jeopardizes the life of someone close to the paper and finally introduces a titillating Page 3. The excellent ensemble includes David Wilson Barnes, Bill Buell (Bad Habits), Andrew Durand (Head Over Heels), Eden Marryshow, Colin McPhillamy (The Ferryman), Erin Neufer (Nathan the Wise), Kevin Pariseau (The Explorers Club), Rana Roy, Michael Siberry (Junk, Six Degrees of Separation), Robert Stanton (Fuddy Mears, All in the Timing) and Tara Summers (The Hard Problem). Jonny Lee Miller (who did not appear in London) is a serious rival for Carvel at Tony time. Director Rupert Goold (King Charles III) masterfully keeps everything moving along smoothly. The play is a highly theatrical and quite entertaining work. What it is not is a deep exploration of Murdoch and his agenda. Running time: two hours 45 minutes including intermission.

American Psycho ***

This musical version of Brett Easton Ellis’s controversial 1991 novel about Patrick Bateman (the mesmerizing Benjamin Walker), an investment banker by day and serial killer by night, is a triumph of style over substance. Although I have neither read the book nor seen the movie, I gather that the musical has smoothed out a lot of the rough edges and reduced the body count substantially. Satire trumps gore most of the time. The soullessness of consumerist capitalism in the Reagan era is well-captured by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s book, Duncan Sheik’s music, Lynn Page’s choreography and Rupert Goold’s direction. The gadgets, brands, clubs and restaurants may have changed but the spirit of entitlement in 1989 New York is not all that different from today’s. Bateman and his coworkers are as vacuous as their pecs are buff. The women are equally unlikable. The monochromatic scenic design by Es Devlin and sophisticated projections by Finn Ross are so striking that they sometimes threaten to upstage the actors. Among them are Helene York as Bateman’s obnoxious fiancee, Jennifer Damiano as his love-struck secretary, Drew Moerlein as his rival, Morgan Weed as his mistress and Alice Ripley, basically wasted, as his mother. The whirling sets, hyperactive videos, bright lights (by Justin Townsend) and gaudy costumes (by Katrina Lindsay) eventually produced a feeling of sensory overload and a diminishing conviction that the story was worth all the effort involved. The second act loses some of the early energy. Nevertheless, as its best moments, the show’s style overcomes its flaws and makes for edgy entertainment. The audience, considerably younger than usual for Broadway, was quite enthusiastic. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes including intermission.

King Charles III ***

Playwright Mike Bartlett, whose plays “Cock” and “Bull” had successful New York runs, certainly deserves an “A” for audacity. In this ‘future history play,’ now on Broadway, he speculates on what might happen when Queen Elizabeth II finally leaves the scene. His portrayal of the surviving royals is less than flattering, so it is a tribute to British openness that this play could even appear on a London stage, let alone win a bunch of prizes. To up the ante, Bartlett has written the play in blank verse and filled it with allusions to several Shakespeare plays. When the aged Charles (a fine Tim Pigott-Smith) at last becomes king, the first thing he does is provoke a crisis by his principled but ill-advised refusal to sign a privacy bill that Parliament has passed because he feels it is too restrictive to the press. Considering the treatment by the press that he had endured over the years, his stand is ironic. During the more satirical first act, we meet all the members of the immediate royal family whose portrayal both supports and subverts our preconceptions, as well as the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. The 11 other cast members, all from the West End production, (Anthony Calf, Oliver Chris, Richard Goulding, Nyasia Hatendi, Adam James, Margot Leicester, Miles Richardson, Tom Robertson, Sally Scott, Tafline Steen and Lydia Wilson) are excellent. As the crisis deepens, the second act turns darker and more Lear-like. The splendid production, fluidly directed by Rupert Goold, has a simple but effective set by Tom Scutt with a large carpeted dais surrounded by stone walls with a few doors. There is a band high on the walls that at first looks like it is composed of round stones, but when the lighting changes they are revealed to be the suggestions of faces watching the action. The costumes are mostly black except for the ceremonial outfits worn on occasion by the three male royals. We are also treated to live music by Joyce Pook, played by two musicians in one of the boxes. The play has interesting things to say about the role of royalty in the 21st century and the current state of life in the UK. However, if you are not a devoted Anglophile or an avid follower of the royal family, you may find the evening a bit tedious. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes including intermission.