Pravda back
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Cautionary tale of journalistic corruption gets solid
revival Recommended
by Hedy Weiss, theater critic
2/14/05
The late 1970s and '80s were a tumultuous time
in the newspaper business, particularly in Great
Britain, a country that had long prided itself on the
exuberance,
variety and historic freedom of its print media.
Much of the chaos was a direct result of the
entrance onto the scene of an exceedingly cheeky Aussie
named Rupert Murdoch. His supermarket tabloid
approach
to journalism (reminiscent of an earlier American
publishing magnate, William Randolph Hearst)
and his conservative politics dovetailed neatly with
the arrival of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
and her ferocious sense of private enterprise
and
weakened trade unions. And the changes he brought
to Fleet Street, London's fabled newspaper hub,
were enormous, lasting and contagious.
That tectonic shift is at the
core of "Pravda," a
play that spilled red hot from the typewriters of
British playwrights Howard Brenton and David Hare
in 1985 (when it debuted at London's National Theatre)
and remains a blistering indictment of the corruption
of journalism two decades later.
The play, now in a bristling
Chicago debut at the invaluable TimeLine Theatre,
should probably not
be reviewed by working journalists; far too many
of the scenes imagined by Brenton and Hare have been
enacted in reality right before their eyes. On the
other hand, there is a certain relish that comes
with knowing the territory so well. And now, as Murdoch
and his leviathan News Corp. rule even more of the
media universe than they did in the 1980s (with Donald
Trump and his NBC television show, "The Apprentice," taking
Murdoch's Darwinian outlook to new heights), "Pravda" remains
a tragicomic cautionary tale and inky black satire.
It's not as if everything in the newsrooms of the
Leicester Bystander, the Daily Victory and the Daily
Tide is as pure as the driven snow when South African
magnate Lambert Le Roux (David Parkes in top form,
with a voice like raw pearls) arrives in London with
his hilariously vulgar accountant, Eaton Sylvester
(Terry Hamilton, who nearly steals the show), a vulture
of a business manager who oversees Le Roux's vast
vertical holdings. In fact, the publishers of these
papers are an effete bunch, largely out of touch
with their readers and mostly interested in racehorses
and hobnobbing with the 10 Downing Street set.
But Le Roux's appearance does trigger instant flop
sweat on the brows of the various editors and writers
who ultimately will have their papers gobbled up
and reconfigured while whatever ethics they may still
possess are quickly chewed up and spit in their faces.
Certainly this is the case with
Andrew May (the perfectly wide-eyed PJ Powers), a
naive but hungry
editor with decidedly malleable principles (inspired
by the London Times' Harold Evans), whose new wife,
Rebecca Foley (a very English Fannie Hungerford),
is a fervent liberal journalist with a good deal
more spine than her husband. And watching how he
and his peers react (those not handed pink slips
on the spot tend to roll over quite quickly and obediently,
as Le Roux knows they will) is not a pretty sight.
Of course, Brenton and Hare exaggerate to make their
points, without suggesting the real anguish and sense
of helplessness felt by those with an abiding passion
for journalism and a belief in its crucial role in
democracy. But director Louis Contey has deployed
his cast of 15 with great energy (if a somewhat too
persistent shrillness), and a real feel for the inner
sanctums of power and privilege -- from dog tracks
to men's clubs -- and the ethical voids of those
on both sides of the gate.
