In The Print chronicles a turning point in the history of Britain’s labour movement. In 1984, when Brenda Dean became the first woman to head a British union, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was already advancing an agenda to curb the power of organised labour. On becoming general secretary of SOGAT, the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades, Dean found herself navigating not only bitter internal struggles between rival unions, but also the growing influence of Rupert Murdoch, owner of four of Britain’s most powerful newspapers. The play capably traces this complex conflict between management-driven modernisation and a union determined to protect its members’ pay and conditions. However, it too often tells rather than shows. Excessive narration drains the drama of urgency, with scenes feeling less like lived experience and more like illustrative fragments in a historical lecture. Much of this narration falls to Claudia Jolly as Dean, and while she brings intelligence and flashes of steel to the role, the writing leaves her stranded. Dean never fully comes into focus. In her exchanges with Murdoch, we are set up for a clash of principle and power, and Alan Cox delivers Murdoch’s calculating charm with quiet, unsettling precision. Jolly, by contrast, begins as a figure of conviction, open to change but firm on workers’ rights, yet her eventual defeat and subsequent move to the House of Lords blur rather than deepen our understanding of her. The play never quite decides what it wants Dean to represent, and as a whole it sits awkwardly between a political drama and a character study. We have neither a cleanly defined battle between the opposing forces of good and evil, nor a fully realised examination of a woman caught in an impossible position and whose compromises are open to question. This lack of focus ultimately blunts the work's emotional impact. While director Josh Roche largely handles the challenges of staging in the round with assurance, there are stretches where sections of the audience are left staring at the back of Jolly’s head, an unintended, yet telling, image of the production's opaque presentation of its central figure. In The Print remains an intelligent and worthwhile account of a pivotal historical moment, but it never fully trusts the theatrical power of its own story. With less exposition and a clearer sense of its central perspective, it might have been not just informative, but genuinely gripping.
Rated: ★★★
Reviewed by J.C.
Photo by Charlie Flint
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