G***t B***** n

Theatre Royal, Haymarket

This play is a miss by a mile.

The theatre’s website claims, ‘Richard Bean’s fast and furious new play is an anarchic and foul-mouthed satire about the press, the police and the political establishment. Welcome to The Free Press, a tabloid newspaper locked in a never-ending battle for more readers.’

Not so. This was an unfunny and humdrum retelling of everything we learned from the Leveson enquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press.

A more perceptive playwright would look at the post-Leveson landscape and offer satirical insights into how the tabloid press seems to have survived Leveson largely unscathed and even recently set up its own ‘Independent Press Standards Organisation’. Time will tell what ‘independent’ and ‘standards’ mean but I suspect we’ll find that tabloid definitions differ from those of decent people.