Enquirer

Synopsis

A new site-specific theatre production based on interviews with leading figures in the newspaper industry in the UK. The once respected, massively influential and lucrative newspaper industry is in crisis. Rocked by ongoing allegations of corruption, bribery and illegal practices, the media has become the story. Behind the headlines, newspapers circulation figures continue to spiral downward, with the knock-on effect of ever-decreasing advertising revenue and redundancy now commonplace across all levels of the industry. At the same time, the explosion of digital media and the possibility and expectation of instant, free news 24 hours a day has completely wrong-footed the industry and left it reeling. No-one would argue that the revelations and reverberations of the past five years have been anything less than extraordinary, but the question no-one can answer is whether there will even be a newspaper industry in another five years. Blending fact, anecdote and passionate opinion, Enquirer is a site-specific piece of theatre performed in an empty media office block in Glasgow. This promenade production has been created as a rapid response to the unfolding events of recent months in the newspaper industry. The show will be updated throughout the rehearsal and performance period to reflect the current state of play.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 8 October 2012

Too many interviews, as well as too many cooks, have spoiled this broth of a promenade show about journalism, which sprawls untidily and unfocussed around and throughout a modern city warehouse.

While purporting to show an industry on the cliff-edge - with very little reference, surprisingly, to the decline in sales, phone hacking or the Leveson inquiry - it ends up distilling every cliché in the book while failing to cohere as a theatrical entity.

The project is a collaboration between the National Theatre of Scotland (Vicky Featherstone and John Tiffany co-editing and directing), the London Review of Books (Andrew O'Hagan co-editing) and three journalists – Paul Flynn, Deborah Orr and Ruth Wishart – who conducted the interviews.

Orr’s interview with Roger Alton, former editor of the Observer and now a Times executive, is the best thi...

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