Arcola, London
The timing of this production from Ice & Fire, theatre's answer to Amnesty International, could hardly be more felicitous. While the phone-hacking scandal continues to dominate the news agenda, On the Record presents us with six journalists who radiate integrity, fearless independence and a desire to make people's lives better through their work. What drives the mainstream media, American photojournalist Zoriah Miller tells us sadly, isn't news but money: "It's an entertainment industry." Whether or not consumers of that industry get the media they deserve, he doesn't say.
As the experiences of these journalists are contrasted, it becomes clear that it doesn't matter whether they work in the land of the free or a country strangled by corruption: the constraints and censorship they battle are the same. And so are the motivations: Amira Hass, writing about Israel, and Lydia Cacho, campaigning in Mexico, talk eloquently of the need to monitor power and interrogate privilege. What they are answering, says Lasantha Wickrematunge, former editor of Sri Lankan newspaper the Sunday Leader, is "the call of conscience", putting their own lives at risk. Wickrematunge was assassinated in 2009.
These people are fierce, proud and hearteningly optimistic. There are lovely performances, especially from Kika Markham as the fastidious Hass, and the overlapping tales are neatly handled by director Michael Longhurst. But even when the writing shifts from verbatim material to dramatised, the stories, though absorbing, don't feel sufficiently theatrical. You get a glimpse of the production's potential when Selva Rasalingam, as Wickrematunge, and Paul Bhattacharjee as his brother-in-law Lal, give an account of the Sunday Leader's arguments with successive Sri Lankan governments. Their dialogue is lively, easy, full of self-deprecating humour ? and makes you realise how much you're being spoken at elsewhere.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/jul/25/on-the-record-review
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