Went to see
Great Britain last night at the Lyttleton, with Billie Piper playing lead and Robert Glenister (He of the techie wiz from Hustle) playing an excellent cameo as the News Editor.
The play itself is a fast paced conflation of many of the recent big issues - phone hacking, press/police relations, media power, political corruption - into two and a half hours of rollocking fun. The pace is so fast, you don't mind the cheap shots, the plot itself is entirely predictable from the first. The inclusion of a Little Person (I think that's the right nomenclature for dwarf?) as a character was was used to good dramatic effect, without being anything like token inclusion or positive discrimination (anyone been to some of those plays in Stratford Royal over the years?).
The staging makes excellent use of a wide range of techniques with much use being made of two moveable screens that double as video display or set flats. Scene changes are accompanied by funny and ever more ridiculous spoof newspaper paste-ups, for example from "The Gardener - We think so you don't have to" and the "Dependent - On Russian oil money". The Mail is the Mail, they can't make that any funnier.
All the players are in there somewhere, lampooned almost beyond recognition. No, that's not true, you recognise them perfectly. Brooks, Murdoch, etc etc etc
Payoff isn't particularly complex, but actually thought provoking. I was tempted to put this in POBI as a result, but instead I'll use a spoiler. No big deal, your choice.
After the hectic romp of the progress of the play, the payoff was very simple and very clear. From Billy Piper, translated into real life:
The papers had been hacking phones of celebs and everyone else for years and nobody really minded. the thing that brought us down was Maddy. If we had helped find Maddy as a result of the hacking - we would have been heroes, not villains.
Frighteningly, that's probably right.
