Review of Loft Theatre Company production of Pravda (2013)

Any similarity between the characters of this play and real people turns out to be anything but coincidental.

And any suggestion that it’s a satire firmly rooted in the 1980s can be instantly dispelled. Pravda positively crackles with topicality. In the blink of an eye, before you can even utter the magic word ‘Leveson’, it has become a play for today.

This tremendous production revels in the irony and revelations expounded by authors David Hare and Howard Brenton in what they gleefully refer to as ‘a Fleet Street comedy’. The phrase itself is pure comedy in terms of what is served up – it teases, it taunts, it BITES. And director Gordon Vallins and his sparky cast go to press with a wicked relish that would do the dodgiest tabloid editor proud.

At the centre of it all is a ruthless newspaper magnate with a passion for power and money and a basic hatred for genuine journalists. Surely there could be no such person in real life...? He is embodied here in the form of one Lambert Le Roux, played with stunning charismatic malevolence and an irresistible South African accent by David Pinner.

Along the way this brazen individual epitomises everything from capitalist corruption to political persecution, with sex and scandal for dessert. Projected images from the real world hint at the idea that some of this might even be true (heaven forbid!), that there might even be a lack of ethics in the world of media (arrant nonsense!). The production descends gradually and brilliantly into a crazy cartoon of scheming manipulation and outright amoral anarchy.

Surrounding the superb Mr Pinner is a variety of co-conspirators, voluble government mouthpieces and hapless victims. Prime among them are James Wolstenholme’s splendidly obsequious yes-man, Michael Barker’s pompous MP and an entertaining cross-section of characters cleverly contrasted by Phil Reynolds.

There is even room for nostalgia for some of us, shall we say, ‘mature’ journalists in reliving the golden days of hot-metal printing and sharp-tongued compositors. Hey-ho. Things ain’t what they used to be.

An extraordinary evening, marvellously conceived and dashingly delivered.

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Peter McGarry is an experienced, independent professional theatre critic who has agreed to review Loft Theatre Company productions.

The agreement with the Loft is that Peter is free to express his opinions for good or ill. The Loft Theatre Company has no control whatsoever over the content of these reviews and will never comment publicly on what he writes.