It’s 1985. London. Rupert Murdoch secretly relocates his entire newspaper operation overnight from Fleet Street to a purpose-built facility in Wapping, locking out five thousand print workers without warning. Facing him: Brenda Dean, the first woman ever elected leader of a major British trade union, who must somehow hold a fractious coalition together against a man who seems to have already won before the fight even starts.
In The Print, written by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky, takes this year-long standoff — known as the Wapping dispute — and wrestles it into 90 tight, no-interval minutes. Given we’re living through another era of tech moguls rewriting the rules while calling it progress, the timing feels pointed.
The production values are impressively high. Claudia Jolly’s Brenda Dean is formidable — principled, steely, never sentimental. Opposite her, Alan Cox leans into Murdoch’s rogue charm, portraying him less as a villain than a disruptive force convinced of his own necessity. Around them, a nimble ensemble (Alasdair Harvey, Georgia Landers, Jonathan Jaynes, Russell Bentley) shifts effortlessly between roles and accents, bringing energy and clarity to a crowded stage.
Josh Roche’s direction is particularly assured. Actors move fluidly through the space, often addressing one another through the audience, maintaining a sense of constant confrontation and turning the stage into a kind of war room. Roche elevates the voiceover-style narration when the two leads stop addressing us and start directing it at each other. What could have been exposition turns into a face-off. Storytelling becomes strategy. A reminder that business, here, is a war — a war of economics.
Peiyao Wang’s set keeps things minimal, giving the actors space to shine, while Sarah Spencer’s soundscape keeps everything tightly wound underneath, humming like a well-oiled episode of Succession (appropriately, as Brian Cox was in the audience).
That said, a word of warning: if, like me, you come in without a working knowledge of 1980s Fleet Street union politics, the opening twenty minutes will feel like a blur — acronyms and insider references fired off at speed, clearly to the delight of an audience largely old enough to remember it. Once the plot settles, the tension is genuinely gripping. But it never quite lifts into the kind of theatrical gut-punch that something like The Lehman Trilogy delivers — where you leave feeling the ground has shifted. This is closer to a sharply written dramatised essay: intelligent, witty, admirably even-handed, but more stimulating than moving.
Still, In The Print lands on an intriguing note. It complicates its own allegiances, leaving us with the uncomfortable suggestion that Murdoch’s vision — however controversial — may have been inevitable.
Worth seeing. Go informed if you can.
In The Print runs at the King’s Head Theatre until 3 May.
https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/in-the-print-8y4s
Reviewer: Klervi Gavet
Reviewed: 30th March 2026
North West End UK Rating: