INTERVIEW: Early days of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire explored in ‘Ink’
Photo: The cast of Ink brings to life the early days of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus / Provided by BBB with permission.
Ink, the new play by James Graham, charts the journey of a crack team of journalists and media executives as they turn around the dwindling circulation numbers of The Sun, a well-known London newspaper. The show, which premiered at the Almeida Theatre in North London, is currently playing an extended engagement at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, courtesy of the Manhattan Theatre Club.
The story would not be as consequential if not for one name in the Playbill: Rupert Murdoch, played by Tony-nominated actor Bertie Carvel. Murdoch, of course, would move on from The Sun to kickstart Fox News and other media outlets, wracking up plenty of controversy along the way.
The action of Ink takes places in 1969 and mostly centers on The Sun’s newsroom, headed by Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller). One of the key characters is also Sir Alick, played by Colin McPhillamy, a Broadway veteran of The Ferryman, The Importance of Being Earnest and Waiting in the Wings. In fact, McPhillamy is seemingly the only actor this year to be involved in two shows nominated for Best Play at the Tonys: Ink and The Ferryman.
His journey to this journalistic drama began with an audition.
“I knew that it was coming,” McPhillamy said in a recent phone interview. “I had heard of the London production, and I knew that Bertie Carvel was the only one of the London cast who would come. … So I knew they would be looking to hire people who could either replicate British, or in my case Australian voices, and were resident in New York, so I looked out for it. And I said to my agent, ‘Please, try and get me seen,’ and so I auditioned. … That’s how it started, and I was lucky enough to get offered the part.”
The actor was familiar with The Sun’s meteoric rise in the competitive field of tabloid journalism because he lived through some of this story and these headlines in London. McPhillamy was actually born in London, although both of his parents are Australian.
“I went to school in Sydney, and I spent time in Australia fairly regularly,” he said. “So Murdoch is obviously a very famous Australian who’s now become an American, so it’s great to fill in the gap in this way. I think that although the story isn’t really new to me, what’s new is the perspective that the play opens up. I thought this resonates. It explains so much.”
Rupert Goold, Tony nominated for Ink and currently the Almeida’s artistic director, helms the production, which started at the Almeida, transferred to the West End and now plays Broadway through July. McPhillamy knew of the director by reputation and has seen several of his shows, which include King Charles III and American Psycho.
“I had never worked with him before, but, of course, I knew him by reputation because he keeps producing fantastic shows,” McPhillamy said. “I knew a couple of people who had been in Charles III that he directed, which was on Broadway a few years ago, and he’s run the Almeida obviously in North London, which has a great reputation for challenging and interesting work. A couple of things about him is he’s very user-friendly as a director. I mean, given that he had mounted two productions of this already, so he has a very clear idea of what he wants and what’s working. But within that he was open to experimentation on new ideas. We tried lots of things that they hadn’t done before, but he’s very detailed. He’s very meticulous. So you’ve got on the one hand the support of someone who knows what they’re doing and on the other hand the freedom to explore, so it’s a very good combination.”
He added: “In a rehearsal room, it really takes its tone from the guy in charge, so the whole thing was just a very positive, interesting, exciting, happy experience, which is just ideal conditions. This is how it should be. Why isn’t it like this every time?”
McPhillamy’s praises extend to the cast, which, in addition to Miller and Carvel, includes David Wilson Barnes, Bill Buell, Andrew Durand, Robert Stanton, Rana Roy and Michael Siberry, among others.
“Maybe [Goold] has a sixth sense about who’s going to be able to work cooperatively as part of a team,” he said. “If somebody wants to go in another direction, or if people have too many ideas, it just doesn’t work, but in this case, it’s a very talented company. Everybody is very good, so there’s a high level of skill there. People were able to respond to what Rupert was asking for very quickly, and as you say, it is a very strong ensemble. And it has to be because the set is quite hazardous. If you lose concentration, it would be easy to have an accident, to fall down the trap or off one of the levels or something like that, so it does require everybody to be focused the whole time.”
Throughout the play’s rehearsing, there were conversations about the importance of the piece and how The Sun’s story takes on a new light given today’s cable news dominance and commentary-based journalism.
“We all know and understand exactly what’s being explored in the play,” McPhillamy said. “We know where we stand. I don’t know that there’s anybody in the cast who rushes home and turns on Fox News for a bit of spin and infotainment. I think the consensus would be, this is how it started, if you like. This is how we’ve ended up with the media environment that we’re all living in at the moment. I think that’s very clear in the play. I think the play is very clever because the form of the play is tabloid, very much like the newspaper it’s telling the story of. I think that’s part of the cleverness of the evening, and I’m not sure that that comes over immediately. So I think it’s a play that rewards thinking about it. What are the themes? What is going on? What’s behind the story?”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Ink, written by James Graham and directed by Rupert Goold, is now playing Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, courtesy of the Manhattan Theatre Club. The production transferred from the West End and the Almeida Theatre in London. Click here for more information and tickets.
