Quiz, Minerva Theatre, Chichester, review: theatre's boy wonder hits the jackpot again
Fingers on buzzers. Which Nottinghamshire-born playwright found themselves laughing all the way to the bank this year? Was it a) Jemma Rashag b) Marge Jamash or c) James Graham?
No prizes for guessing. It is of course the name that should be on the tip of your tongues. With Quiz, his typically thorough and thoroughly entertaining treatment of the “coughing Major” controversy that beset ITV’s Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in 2001, Graham, theatre’s golden boy, has hit the jack-pot again.
Though superficially the play looks like a minor deal when set beside his current crowd-pullers, Labour of Love and Ink, the evening not only offers the sort of baseline fun-factor necessary to lure the punters, it delivers such a sophisticated résumé of the episode that it attains the status of a “state-of-the-nation” drama.
I’d put my frugal savings on it winging its way from the Minerva Theatre in Chichester into the West End to make a hat-trick. And you could even argue it completes an unofficial trilogy of work this year looking at the way power and influence operate in the age of populism. As with the rebranding (and arguably hollowing out) of Labour, and the news revolution ushered in by Murdoch, the question left hanging by the two hours of traffic across the Minerva stage is whether we’re being constantly manipulated.
For those who need their memories jogged, the gist of the story concerns Charles Ingram, the former British army major who became the third contestant to win the biggest cash-prize in British TV game-show history only to see his victory overturned following allegations of cheating. The case against him, his wife Diana and an acquaintance called Tecwen Whittock, who was said to have coughed tactically in the Elstree studio to assist Ingram, came to trial in 2003 – resulting in a majority verdict of guilty; all three got suspended prison sentences.
Not only do we see Gavin Spokes’s amiably bluff-seeming Ingram sweat it out in the Mastermind-like chair (indirectly inspired, we learn, by Gestapo interrogation techniques), with Keir Charles emulating Chris Tarrant’s craggy smiles and showbiz mateyness to perfection, we’re in the hot-seat too. Amid a casino-shiny faux TV studio, we’re given a taster of pub-quizzy questions, then asked, via a jab on a digital device, whether we find Ingram and co guilty or not.
At the end of the first half, it looks like an open-and-shut case. But after the interval, Graham presents a counter-swipe for the defence, highlighting the editing-job on the inculpating tape-recording, and flagging up various possibly redeeming factors, among them the urge Ingram felt to theatricalise his dilly-dallying responses.
When taken into account with the psychological mechanics of the game (we get a handy potted guide to its creation, and the popular TV context in which it was formed), doubt creeps in where once there was certainty. And what looked almost comical acquires the hue of personal tragedy: a married couple faced with social and financial ruin, their pets killed, violence threatened.
People became so obsessed with taking part in “Millionaire” that syndicates were formed to ‘crack’ its entry system. Graham himself relies on others here – the play is based on a book called “Bad Show” (by Bob Woffinden and James Plaskett).
Yet the way he tallies the tale with a broader look at truth and lies, and even weaves in the US military’s distribution of “Most-Wanted” playing cards during the Iraq war, is his own particular brand of genius. Daniel Evans, finishing his box-office bonanza of a first year at Chichester with a flourish, directs with the certain inside knowledge that he has a winner on his hands. Phone a friend and go.
Until Dec 9. Tickets: 01243 781312; www.cft.org.uk
