Hot metal, cold heart… In the Print (2026), King’s Head Theatre

I just want to print newspapers…

I was just starting out in publishing when the events depicted in this play were taking place and we too were looking at the emergence of desktop publishing, online (oh yes), expert systems and methods of production that would soon cut out traditional typesetters as well as plate makers and various stages in the production process. Artwork had to have the designer’s NGA membership number on and it was presented to printers with overlays and instructions for printers to photograph and turn into printing plates. Technology was changing fast and, as this play points out, that was an issue for those with costs to cut and others with livelihoods to protect. Of course, Fleet Street was also riddled with “Spanish Practices” and union-based agreements that lowered productivity whilst protecting jobs. There’s blame on both sides here as there always is.

Aware of all this is SOGAT General Secretary, Brenda Dean (here played with wit and resolution by Claudia Jolly) but as she tells the seemingly impenetrable Rupert Murdoch (Alan Cox, playing the Devil with conviction and no heart) “there are ways…”. There might indeed have been other paths to follow in changing the production process for the Australian media Moghul’s four UK titles – The Sun, News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times – including a negotiated plan involving the various unions and natural wastage but he preferred a more callous and immediate course of action.

Alan Cox and Claudia Jolly (All photos Charlie Flint Photography)

Under the guise of producing a new daily paper, The London Post, Murdoch set up a new printing works in Wapping in which he set up all the print capacity he would need to run his papers and, having done a deal with one of the unions, the EETPU (Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union) he had the technical staff trained up and ready to go with neither SOGAT or the NGA aware. The NUJ was also easily neutralised with the help of The Times Editor Andrew Neil and The Sun’s amoral bundle of unresolved masculine crisis, Kelvin McKenzie. I had a friend who worked for Neil at the time and he was apparently a “good boss” but – she was blonde, good-looking and maybe he had his favourites – and he certainly did his master’s bidding in persuading most of his journalists to betray their brethren.

Alasdair Harvey plays Neil as a tool of Murdoch’s and rather lacking in the principles he has always demanded from others. Such is the life of a critic – those who can do, Andrew, those who can’t just write about it! If ‘Drew is simpering, Kelvin MacKenzie - Russell Bentley having a ball! - is the monster we all know now to be unrepentant, a salesman role-playing as an editor, selecting and twisting the stories he thinks his readers want. I knew someone at The Sun too and in 1989, when Kelvin ran his lies about Liverpool fans stealing from the dead at Hillsborough, his staff pleaded with him not to publish this unevidenced story… he ignored them in favour of the lies.

At the time, as Michael Crick observes in the programme notes, Dean was seen as being too close to Murdoch but the reality as presented here seems to be that she was doing her best to save as many jobs as she could. Written by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky who also wrote the excellent, informed and entertaining, Gang of Three – also fabulous at this venue, the play is heavy on detail and yet the assured direction from Josh Roche makes light of this and enables the characters to breath as this complex narrative unfolds.

Jonathan Jaynes and Claudia Jolly (All photos Charlie Flint Photography)

This is all the more remarkable as the actors take on multiple roles, Jonathan Jaynes plays Eric Hammond as well as Dean's SOGAT right-hand man Bill Sargeant, whilst Georgia Landers plays the union’s legal brief as well as a whistle-blower from Wapping. The whole space is used with the cast often joining in from the shadows to highlight the voices of workers but all the while Cox’s Murdoch is centre stage facing them all down in his desire to “just print newspapers…”

In the end, we all know that Murdoch was allowed to carry on printing his news… and the crisis averted he was able to secure a foothold in the USA with Fox News where he sent over Mr Neil to work his peculiar magic. But, in a similar way to all political lives ending in some kind of failure what will be his legacy now, not only given the unfortunate impact his type of entertainment has had on democracies and the strength of debate.

More to the point, the revolution started in the mid-80s has accelerated through the dot.com boom and now onto social media news and AI… It was a splendid surprise to see Brian Cox take his seat just before the show started - no pressure Alan! - and you wonder who will succeed Murdoch now and has anyone the skillset to deal with news agendas and breaking narratives that are almost uncontrollable.

Georgia Landers and Russell Bentley (All photos Charlie Flint Photography)

IThankYou Verdict: ***** This is such a well-wrought play in terms of covering the complexity of the issues and the key personalities in a way that entertains and informs and educates: Lord Reith is smiling in his heavenly Broadcasting House: The Truth will out!

In the Print plays at the Kings Head until 3 May 2026 and I strongly urge you to book to see it! Not just Brian Cox, but Neil Kinnock – mentioned in the play – and other notables were in attendance, including Michael Crick who wrote about these events as they unfolded. It’s a production of The Spontaneity Shop, James Quaife Productions and King’s Head Theatre Productions and a World Premier – I hope it runs and runs: this is how power and the media works, now as then. But the centre of that power is again in flux and who knows if the Murdoch family empire can master the digital arena as young technocrats with even more money, begin to over power him and his successors…

 

Full details on the King’s Head website. Another winner!

 

 

 

The things we do for love… America the Beautiful (2026), Kings Head Theatre

Liam Jedele and Borris Anthony York (credit Ross Kernahan)

LaBute refuses comfort… That willingness to sit inside discomfort is what makes the work so compelling.

Borris Anthony York

"America the Beautiful" is a patriotic song first published on 4^th July 1895 with lyrics written by Katharine Lee Bates and music composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey, though the two never met. Together they created a song for the ages and one that means something different to every age as the shifting signifiers of American Beauty coagulate into a murderous slop.

Oh sorry, that’s just my take but, to the point, what to make of one of the USA’s finest playwrights Neil LaBute, epic nine-scenario cycle addressing his homeland, love and persuasion in the 2020s? Tonight we saw the first of the triptych with three of these scenarios presented at the Kings Head all different in tone and building a bigger picture that forms itself in your mind as you dash for Kings Cross after realising that Angel Station is closed.

As played by various combinations of just four actors: Liam Jedele, Borris Anthony York, Anna María and Maya-Nika Bewley there is so much thinking required to map the emotional content of three widely different situations and never has the personal being so political in terms of the wider meaning in this, the second week of the Third Gulf War or, as might be said, WWIII.

The first sequence sees Liam Jedele as an anxious and conflicted man aiming to commit murder at the behest of a man Borris Anthony York whom he desires and wants to commit to a life together. Borris plays his paramour as an almost light-hearted and playful guy who winds his uptight boyfriend up with forgetting his key card, buying Danish pastries and turning up with a strict no contact clause in their relationship.

His character is about to marry a rich older man and, sizeable insurance policies being what they are, he can bear the repulsive sexual contact just long enough to get married before sending his new groom to his death at the hands of his younger lover. We’re just not sure, the longer they talk, if things will work out, Liam’s character apparently battling his own disgust at his sexuality and winding himself up to do the dead so that he can be with his love.

Any relationship between the flirtatious and ultimately faithless rulers of certain states and the War-maker in Chief are purely coincidental.

Borris Anthony York (credit Ross Kernahan)

Talking of which, Borris Anthony York makes a quick change of character and posture as his morphs into an American soldier on trial for the apparent killing of his wife, her lover and several others… This is the fanatic deceived by his own lack of logic – perhaps little reason to believe in his wife’s fidelity whilst also blaming her for what he “had” to do… cognitive dissonance in the face of so many dead.

Women have a “power”… his wife almost bade him do it and he had no rational explanation for his vengeful ferocity. It’s only a short leap to imagine the ICE agent’s decision to execute US citizens in the streets for simply getting in his way or for being “unfaithful” to a common culture someone had convinced him was shared widely. America is Ugly in different ways as it is beautiful: the kill switch is in the hands of the beholder.

Then last we saw either the greatest saleswoman in the world or the sweetest lover as Anna María works to persuade Maya-Nika Bewley that they should be lovers by firstly sleeping with her faithless boyfriend and then telling the other woman that she had to do it as a chance encounter had left her instantly smitten and convinced that she was the love of her live.

Taken at face value this is a sweet story but nothing is clearly as it seems in any of these acts, and given that there are six more to come, one should reserve judgement even as new possibilities emerge the more you think about what has just transpired.

It’s an exercise in persuasion and logic and, given this can be as much technique as anything else you’re not quite so sure that this is a love match or a power play? Have we not seen sexual power – or just force of personality – used to make people act against their will?

Anna María and Maya-Nika Bewley credit Ross Kernahan

IThankYouTheatre verdict: I’m reeling on the train post show and can only throw four big stars back in the play’s direction. It’s daring and engaging and so well performed by the four leads who make the most of LaBute’s outstanding words. ****

These are actors we will want to see more of and the direction from Artistic Director of Greenwich Theatre James Haddrell is outstanding creating another world just yards away from the comforts of Upper Street.

The first two chapters play at the King’s Head until 21^st March and then transfer to the Greenwich Theatre from 31^st March to 4^th April.

Do not miss these intimate and impactful shows, you won’t stop thinking about them for days…