Tag: Verity Sadler

The Unbelievers by Nick Payne, Royal Court Theatre, 11 October 2025

I wasn’t an unbeliever in this play/production, nor was I completely convinced

Janie and I saw the second preview of this one. Not that the preview lacked the polish of a honed Royal Court Theatre production, but it is possible that a few aspects were toned down/toned up or cut between previews and press night. I am writing this ahead of seeing any reviews, although I shall probably publish it a week or two after press night.

Another thing to say is that we saw this taught, psychological drama around 24 hours after learning of Bobbie Scully‘s unexpected and untimely death, which wasn’t an ideal mood setter ahead of seeing this sort of play.

It probably matters little what I say about this play/production anyway – it had effectively sold out even before the previews, let alone the press night and reviews. And why not? What a stellar list of contributors. We have very much enjoyed Nick Payne’s plays several times before – in particular Constellations was a triumph.

Similarly, Nicola Walker has long-impressed us as an actress. Although perhaps better known to most as a TV actress we have seen her several times on the stage, on at least one occasion (The Curious Incident…)directed brilliantly, as in The Unbelievers, by Marianne Elliot.

The list of recognisably excellent cast and creatives went on. That’s why we booked early. That’s why lots of people booked early.

The story is almost as unpleasant a scenario as you can possibly imagine. A middle-class family’s teenage son doesn’t return from school one day and disappears without trace. Did he run away? Was he abducted? Did he run away and then subsequently meet his demise? The play shows the impact of this horrifying event on the family, especially the mother, Miriam (Nicola Walker), over a number of years.

Janie got more out of this one than I did.

It felt, to me, as though the piece had been written as a virtuoso piece for the lead actress, which it undoubtedly is. Only an actress of Nicola Walker’s quality could carry such a part through 100 minutes or so of unbroken drama, during which she barely leaves the stage.

But the piece has a relentless gloom about it; it is not a spoiler to say that neither the family, nor the audience, get any answers to the mystery, The whole point is that the tragedy comes down to the belief the individuals involved, cast and audience, have in what might have happened and therefore how to live with the unknown.

Some elements of the play work brilliantly, especially the scenes where this question of belief is explored and illustrated through the drama.

But much of the play especially early scenes, felt like up-market versions of those television police procedurals that, frankly, I’d pay good money to avoid having to see. [Insert your own joke about the BBC licence fee here.]

I also found the light relief scenes rather forced and did not get the desired sense of relief from them. Janie thought they worked well on the whole for her, so perhaps that was more about my sombre mood than the scenes.

I was unconvinced, for example, by the character Anil, who came from a Society for Psychical Research-like organisation. He was trying to be intensely caring and professional, yet was unable to stop himself from answering his phone while in a meeting with distressed people. I think my unbelief in this character was down to the writing, rather than Jaz Singh Deol’s acting. Similarly, Harry Kershaw’s character Benjamin, the loquacious puffin-boffin fiancée of one of the daughters, given the context, was almost impossible for me to believe in, other than as a playwright’s device to try to lighten the mood of an increasingly dark play.

The Unbelievers might get/be getting rave reviews for all I know – you can read formal reviews through this link if you’d like to see them gathered – and for sure it is worth seeing if you have tickets for the short sold-out run.

Nick Payne is a fine writer, it was a superb team of cast/creatives, and The Royal Court puts on fine productions, so Janie and I won’t be dodging these people and places in future – far from it.

But this one just missed the mark for me and only just made the mark for Janie.

Ink by James Graham, Almeida Theatre, 17 June 2017

Bloomin’ ‘eck this was good.

This was the first preview of Ink – so if you are reading this within 10 days or so of the above date, you still won’t be able to see formal reviews but you might still be able to get tickets. Get them before it’s too late!

Brilliant production, incredibly pacey, wonderfully designed, superbly acted – we were gripped from start to finish – for more than three hours – despite the heat and the exhaustion therefrom.

Here is a link to The Almeida’s resource on Ink.

Ink starts with Rupert Murdoch buying a maligned, failing broadsheet paper, The Sun, from IPC (which was in effect The Mirror Group then) and persuading Larry Lamb to edit The Sun for him and help Murdoch beat the Mirror at their own game.

The rest is history and the history of that first year of Murdoch ownership pans out relentlessly on the stage.

The first half was especially pacey, taking us through the early days of the Murdoch era, not least the tension of the tabloid launch in November 1969.

The second half goes deeper and at times darker; the Muriel McKay kidnap/murder and the start of the Page 3 era being covered in a great deal of detail.

I had a strangely good feeling about this play/production despite its provenance. We didn’t much like the preview we saw of This House by James Graham a few years ago – indeed we left in the interval – but I sensed that his writing style would please us in this Fleet Street context far more than it did in the Westminster setting.

Biographical/history plays of this kind have a fundamental problem of course; we know how the story and even the main sub-plots end, so the drama, tension and thought-provocation has to come from elsewhere. James Graham is becoming a master at doing this. His style is different from Peter Morgan’s (Frost/Nixon etc.), but I think we are now blessed with two British writers who are world class at this genre.

Being hyper-critical, I think James Graham is probably a little too kind on Rupert Murdoch and a little too harsh on Larry Lamb. The inference in several scenes is that Lamb was going further than Murdoch wanted him to go, but to my mind it is a classic media proprietor’s trick (and certainly an archetypal Murdoch one) to hire street-fighters to do their work and then seemingly recoil in genteel horror when the street-fighter fights.

James Graham might have shown up the hypocrisy in Murdoch’s position more, but I suspect Graham deliberately chose not to. Murdoch is still alive and hugely influential whereas Larry Lamb and the other main protagonists are gone.

But these are minor points; the story is wonderfully portrayed and I hope the play and this production do extremely well; they deserve to do so.

I might spoil the fun if I reveal the clever effects and coups de theatre that come thick and fast in this production, but I will share a couple.

In one of the scenes illustrating the then ground-breaking marketing and advertising campaigns run by The Sun, the actors threw fistfuls of “money” into the air, much of which landed at the front of the stage but some came tumbling into the audience; in our front row seats I scored a crisp (albeit false) Ayrton on my lap:

A welcome breach of the fourth wall.

Not that the front row was all good news for me and Janie. In one scene, in which Larry Lamb angrily beats out a printing plate himself, because none of the unionised workers will touch the story, Janie and I got showered with…

…ink? Whatever it is, it went all over our clothes.

I called the Almeida on the Monday to ask them what the substance might be and how best we might wash our clothes. Strangely, it was one of the actors who answered the phone; he seemed especially concerned that they try to avoid breaching the fourth wall that way in future performances. Fair point.

But the actor also kindly called me back a few minutes later, after speaking with stage management and wardrobe, to say that they were very cagey indeed about revealing what the actual substance is, but they did give him some washing instructions to pass on to me. The instructions started, “firstly, put on Cat 3 asbestos-hooded coveralls…”  I’m kidding, I’m kidding.

I suppose those two breaches of the fourth wall combine well in an expression that the quintessential Yorkshireman, Larry Lamb, would often have used:

where there’s muck there’s brass.