Today the news is drama. Newspapers have taken to social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to dispense stories via short-form video clips, intended to engage in a hypnotic manner akin to the latest viral video dance. It’s just one nifty strategy of retaining audience engagement at a time when print newspapers are being passed over for more immediate, digital sources of information. The National Theatre’s compelling revival of Tracey Scott Wilson’s 2003 newsroom drama, The Story, takes us back, then, to a time where print media had a monopoly in framing national discourse and journalists battled to become household names in reporting.
At the centre of the play is Yvonne, an ambitious Black Ivy League graduate who dreams of becoming a respected reporter in a national newsroom. However, she faces considerable obstacles since she is consigned to a minor newsletter The Vanguard, which produces inoffensive puff pieces about the Black community. Conveniently she’s dating Jeff, a privileged white senior figure at the paper, who promises her a promotion provided she can land a big scoop. So, when Yvonne hears of a local murder story – a wealthy white teacher has been stabbed in front of his pregnant wife by an unknown Black criminal – she seizes her opportunity for career advancement, unwilling to let facts get in the way.
On the face of it, Scott Wilson’s concern is journalistic integrity, the importance of research and fact-checking over ‘editorialising’. Yet the playwright’s perspective, if probed, is more nuanced. Her female characters, Yvonne and Vanguard editor Pat, ruthlessly sacrifice personal and moral values to stay afloat in a world which is pitted against them as Black women. Yvonne has to rescript her life story to get a foot in the door at the paper; Pat has to stay silent about the countless sexual abuses she has faced to keep a united front for the Civil Rights movement. For particular systems of power to stay intact, Scott Wilson warns, there are sizeable personal costs. It is left to the audience to apportion the degree of moral culpability to the characters and to the larger structures they find themselves in.
Director Clint Dyer’s production throttles forward with the pace of a thriller. Short scenes crackle with tense exchanges and comic verbal sparring. His choice to have parallel moments unfolding simultaneously is risky in terms of narrative fluency, yet it is handled with great technical elan to establish a frenetic atmosphere. Snippets from newsreels are projected above the stage intermittently, immersing the production in the headspinning feel of a newsroom. And as contradictory information emerges all at once, Dyer builds a picture of a fractured, unstable media ecosystem.
Yet where the play really excels is in the precision of the acting. Wright catches exactly the swaggering self-assurance of a junior colleague trying to conceal a flurry of insecurities. And at key moments, she holds sympathy and moral reprehensibility in miraculous balance. Lorraine Toussaint’s Pat is deliciously crabby and aloof, cut from the Miranda Priestly mould. Yet she convincingly thaws when witnessing the desperate measures Yvonne takes to achieve her ambitions. Adding comic relief to the play’s hardgoing themes are Ashley Thomas’s Neil, a suspicious rival journalist full of foolish lines, and Wilf Scolding’s parochially minded Jeff, a clueless nepo-baby for whom Yvonne’s struggles seem a remote reality. All the while, Anna Fleischle’s superb set, a basketball court at a community centre, which remains unchanged for most of the action, reflects the childhood past that Yvonne tries but fails to escape.
The Story is a highly entertaining piece of drama about the conflict between systems with historically ingrained power structures and outsiders who try to excel within their rigid bounds. While seemingly zeroing in on the media industry, Scott Wilson’s play reminds her audience of the value of ethics and moral integrity in a society that is always hungry for the next story.
By Tracey Scott Wilson
Directed by Clint Dyer
Cast includes: Letitia Wright; Lorraine Toussaint; Ashley Thomas; Aliyah Odoffin; Antonia Bernath.
Until: Saturday 24th October 2026
Running Time: 2 hours and 50 minutes, including an interval
Review by Olivia Hurton