Tracey Scott Wilson’s US newspaper drama The Story is definitely more red top than broadsheet in tone. But there’s always a place for some thrills in the theatre. Making its UK debut almost a quarter century after its 2003 US one, its roots stretch even further back in time: it’s inspired by the story of Janet Cooke, a promising young Black reporter for the Washington Post who was forced to return her Pulitzer Prize after her 1980 story about child heroin addicts on the streets of DC turned out to be largely fabricated.
Wilson has her mind on more ambitious stuff than that, however, as she takes us into the ‘Vanguard’ section of a Post-alike newspaper in an unspecified American city. Manned by a somewhat eccentric team of three reporters, all Black, Vanguard is nominally an ‘around town’ style gossip section that has been repurposed as a African American community news by Pat (Lorraine Toussaint), the steely Civil Rights veteran who rules over the section with an iron fist.
She is supported by Neil (Ashley Thomas), her chief underling and longterm mentee, who knows his place. And she enjoys a somewhat frosty relationship with newbie Yvonne (Letitia Wright), an impressive young reporter who has a less easy relationship with the Black community than her co-workers. Bullied by her Black peers as a child, stints in boarding school and Harvard have left her feeling like an outsider, and she is engaged in a clandestine relationship with the paper’s white head of news, nepo baby Jeff (Wilf Scolding).
A big, brash thriller with some solid performances
As Yvonne joins the team, a juicy case is gripping the city. A saintly young white couple got lost in a deprived area and the man was shot dead by an assailant the woman identified as Black. Some time later, Yvonne is approached by a young woman at a community centre, who suggests that she’s part of an all-female gang responsible for the killing. It’s dynamite stuff: all three members of Vanguard – plus Jeff – are desperate to to get to the bottom of the story.
Wilson’s play is unabashedly populist, bordering on trashy at times, and while there may be some real-life precedent for Pat separately commissioning both Yvonne and Neil to get to the bottom of the gang story – so they are overtly in competition – it does feel like a clunking plot device to up the excitement. And it works: Clint Dyer’s production is totally gripping, especially in the first half as the dialogue rapidly intercuts between the two rival journalists bitching about each other. Yes, it has the air of a well-made Channel 5 true-crime drama. But not all theatre need to be highbrow all the time, plus it makes a lot of incisive points about the fragility of the African-American community, especially as Pam’s hardassed facade melts (or at least, becomes more explicable).
The second half, though, is a headlong dive into melodrama that is just too much, and probably doesn’t benefit from the Olivier’s huge stage and abundance of resources - it would have almost certainly worked better as a more intimate drama that focussed on Pam and Yvonne more closely. Instead, after a first half that moves at a pretty even pace, the second is a chaotic minefield of plot twists and revelations that left me too shell shocked to really have a firm opinion on the ending.
I also don’t think it works as a play about journalism, partly because it aggressively sexes up the incident that inspired it, partly because Wilson is simply more interested in her characters’ inner lives than the nitty gritty of the newsroom, partly because with all that’s happened to American newspapers over the last two decades (they’re all screwed apart from the New York Times) it’s left feeling a little quaint.
Still, it’s a big, brash thriller with some solid performances - particularly Toussaint’s Pat, though big-name Wright is good as the driven but awkward Yvonne. You may not find it plausible, but you won’t be bored.
