'The Story' review — Letitia Wright leads a prescient play tackling race and fake news

Read our review of Tracey Scott Wilson's The Story, now in performances at the National Theatre to 24 October.

Summary

• Tracey Scott Wilson's The Story plays at the National Theatre
• Letitia Wright stars as ambitious reporter Yvonne
• Lorraine Toussaint is a formidable force as Pat
• The play resonantly explores race; news-gathering and the blurring of fact and fiction

As the tragic case of Jason Arday still reverberates, The Story is a prescient piece of programming that examines the consequences of relentless pursuit of a news story, the boundaries between fact and fiction, and the impact this can have on diverse communities.

Yvonne is a young, Black, ambitious and highly educated reporter, assigned to find stories that put a positive spin on the local Black community. Bored with her work, she decides to investigate the juicier story of the murder of a white teacher killed in a Black neighbourhood, allegedly by a Black man.

Yvonne must contend with her strict section editor Pat, rival reporter Neil, and white nepo-baby editor Jeff, who also happens to be her boyfriend. The spikiness of a workplace where egos are constantly in competition is revealed: everyone has an investment in the story and how it should be reported. Sensationalism and facts become increasingly blurred as more is revealed.

There’s a lot to absorb here. Tracey Scott Wilson raises intriguing questions about the ethics of news reporting and the eternally knotty issues of racial stereotyping and sexism. Most thought-provoking is the analysis of truth and who is allowed to tell it. However, all these promising strands fail to cohere, adding little new to the conversation and leading to a rushed, open-ended conclusion.

Black Panther star Letitia Wright conveys huge drive and ambition as Yvonne, but never quite convinces in the role. As part of the emerging Black middle class, she is as far removed from the community she is supposed to understand as her white colleagues. Described derisively by her colleague Neil as an “uncertain sister”, Yvonne wants her success to belong to her, not used as a symbol of the achievements of her community. There is little chemistry with secret boyfriend Jeff, played with conviction by Wilf Scolding, but Wright does have enjoyable tension with Ashley Thomas’s sceptical Neil.

Lorraine Toussaint is a truly formidable force as Pat, stern and unwilling to let younger members of the team forget that it is women like her upon whose shoulders they stand. Toussaint really holds the stage in her scenes with the strength and dignity of a long-suffering warrior.

Dialogue often overlaps to tell two stories simultaneously, which is not always successful. Director Clint Dyer handles these scattergun scenes well, but is most effective in delivering the quieter moments, such as when Pat reveals her tumultuous past to Neil.

Anna Fleischle’s set design reflects this busyness. There is an American school-gym vibe, complete with electronic scoreboard and tiered benches. Desks and armchairs are whipped on and off to convey scene changes and hectic projections of newspaper cuttings and flashing videos of news reports add to the increasingly frenetic feel.

We tend to think of ‘fake news’ as a present-day phenomenon, but Wilson was inspired by the 1981 story of Janet Cooke, a Black reporter at The Washington Post, who won and then lost the Pulitzer Prize for an invented story about an eight-year-old Black child who was a heroin addict. Despite having such rich inspiration, it’s a shame The Story never quite matches up.

The Story is at the National Theatre to 24 October. Book The Story tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: The Story (Photos by Feruza Afewerki)