Ink – Memphis Flyer

Rupert Murdoch is 92 and has an unusually active existence in real life — in the last year alone he’s continued wielding power as a media tycoon, has given depositions and will likely testify in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News, he divorced Jerry Hall, he announced his engagement to someone else, and then called it off (apparently due to her religious zealotry).

And then there’s what’s going on not in real life, particularly the popular HBO series Succession that is based on him and his media empire and family — although the fictionalized account seems to bother the real family quite a lot. Another dramatic work involving him is the play Ink by James Graham, which is closing this weekend at Circuit Playhouse.

The play is fiction but is based on one of the key events in Murdoch’s ascension in the media world when he acquired a failing newspaper in England in 1969 and turned it into a brash tabloid that broke rules aplenty and set a tone in journalism that we still witness today.

The story is about how Murdoch hired a friend of his, Larry Lamb, and charged him with beating the circulation numbers of the competition. The result was a crass mix of sensationalistic news reporting, goofy diversions, pictures of scantily-clad women, and low common denominator entertainment. The Sun diminished the practice of journalism and won the circulation war.

Ink is helmed by Warner Crocker, a Chicago-based director who has done plays in Memphis before. He was fascinated by the play and was eager to do the production.

“I’ve read a lot of scripts all my life,” he says. “You read good ones and you read not so good ones, and every now and then you stumble on one you get an opportunity to direct where you go, ‘this is a story I have to tell.’ This was a piece that talks about a moment in time that not only affected what journalism was going to become, but the changes we have experienced in culture, in politics, and just about every facet of our life.”

Crocker says Murdoch “is one of those individuals who, if the planet is still around 200 years from now, they’ll look back and say, he had an influence on everything and changed everything, for better or worse.”

He says that in his discussion with the cast, he likened the story to Frankenstein. “Murdoch in many ways is Dr. Frankenstein and Larry Lamb becomes the monster,” he says. “Graham presents Murdoch as a product of the moment in time who had this idea about change and didn’t necessarily understand the personal consequences of that. He certainly understood the financial consequences, and that’s what he was reaching for.”

When the changes Murdoch set in motion are underway, he finds that it’s not all a thrilling game and that there are terrible downsides. The cocky publisher is forced to reckon with tragedy. “You wouldn’t think of him as a very vulnerable individual,” Crocker says.

But neither is Murdoch a hero. In fact, as Crocker notes, there are no heroes in this play. “We watch them all take this journey together,” he says. “For example, the newsroom staff that you meet in the play come into it and there’s hesitation to begin with, but then they fall in love with the excitement and the romance of creating something new and the success that they’re having.”

It’s thrilling to break the rules and have so much fun, but before long, the staff’s “journalistic morals are challenged by some of the things that their boss is asking them to do to drive circulation. And then decisions have to be made. Do I compromise who I am and what I believe to hang on to this job? Or am I going to move on?”

Key to the effectiveness of the play is the pacing — snappy dialogue, barbed banter, and wisecracks are blended in with newsroom chaos, pressroom drama, slamming of phones, and tales told literally on multiple levels.

“You have to create a sense of momentum where the show is always going,” Crocker says, “because if you stop and think, give the audience the opportunity to stop and think too much about what they’ve just seen, they’re gonna miss the next beat. It’s history unfolding before your eyes and history doesn’t usually give us a chance these days to pause and think about it. I like to put that on the stage.”

Ink runs April 14th through 16th at Circuit Playhouse. Tickets and info here.

If you think journalism has gone to hell, you won’t get an argument from me.

I don’t hate it — I still practice it and am grateful for the income — but the idea and execution of the industry has morphed over the decades from town criers to scandalous broadsheets to principled news organizations to scandalous tabloids to mindless aggregators. Print ruled for ages, but then radio and TV came in to further reshape it, but in any medium, journalism ultimately has to give the public what it wants — and will pay for.

James Graham’s Ink, now playing at Circuit Playhouse, brilliantly describes one of those defining shifts in the newspaper era when, in 1969, a 38-year-old, pre-tycoon Rupert Murdoch bought a failing British rag. To run The Sun, he hired his friend Larry Lamb away from a competitor and challenged him to boost the numbers to surpass the fusty broadsheet that had long led in circulation in the UK.

There’s plenty of newsroom energy in the Circuit Playhouse production of *Ink*. (Credit: Collin Baker)

The play visits all the topics that journalists talk about — newsworthiness, ethics, objectivity — and one of the key insights into the thinking of the new endeavor from Murdoch/Lamb comes in a discussion of the five W’s: who, what, when, where, and why.

But Lamb challenges the need for that last W: “The only thing worth asking isn’t why — it’s: what’s next?”

That philosophy isn’t deep, but sets the stage for how storytelling in newspapers would be trending along with the clearly understood primary goal of making money. Its duty to inform the public would be done by entertaining and titillating readers, not by crafting thoughtful stories for the civic minded. And The Sun would show how a news organization could shape what was next.

The Circuit staging is helmed by Chicago-based Warner Crocker, who keeps the action snappy whether its dialogue between Murdoch (Michael Kinslow) and Lamb (David Hammonds), or chaotic newsroom scenes with the entire cast throwing newspaper bundles, barking into phones, typing furiously, posing for pictures, cracking wise, and arguing tirelessly.

Graham’s script is crisp and purposeful, propelling the story, revealing the characters, and amping up the stakes. It doesn’t set up Murdoch or Lamb as good guys or bad. They have their dreams and in Act One, you may well find yourself pulling for their audacious enterprise to succeed — they are, after all, trying to stick it to the power structure. Act Two keeps the energy but gets inside the consequences of their newspaper’s brashness. How flippant can you be in a life-or-death situation?

The Circuit cast is solid and the production smartly executed. It’s entertaining from the get-go and stirs up enough issues to provoke discussions long after the final bows.

More than 50 years later, Murdoch is still around and still intent on making money from the news business — hence his multi-billion-dollar company named News Corp. His publishing legacy will include taking bold risks and shaping global news coverage as well as shamelessly pushing lies, agendas, and the lowest common denominator.

Ink runs through April 16th at Circuit Playhouse. For info and tickets, go to playhouseonthesquare.org.