At first, it’s as if Bean – a former stand-up who loves gags clever, coarse or corny – might have been watching too many episodes of TV sketch show Little Britain. Taking us into the offices of a nasty, formerly lefty tabloid called The Free Press, he introduces us to a gallery of vipers, weasels and leeches, caricatures all.
None is more odious than Billie Piper’s convincingly shallow and ruthless news editor, Paige Britain, a sultry, stiletto-stamping schemer who might as well sprout devil’s horns. Britain takes to phone-hacking like a duck to water. She gets into bed – literally – with the cops (the Assistant Commissioner of the Met, played by Oliver Chris, whose superior is an idiotic running joke) and seduces the political top-brass (Rupert Vansittart’s eminently amenable Tory toff PM-to-be Jonathan Whey).
The main point is that his play, a kaleidoscope of short scenes, is blessedly funny. Far and away the most absurd character, played with admirable po-faced sincerity by Aaron Neil, is a dunderhead police commissioner who, faced with an intractable murder inquiry, goes on television and announces “a clue is the one thing I’ve not got” and who allows himself to be publicly Tazered in the interests of good PR.
Accused of an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, he is also wittily told of the golden rule: “Thou shalt not comfort thy rod with a staff.”
It becomes a little harder to laugh at the conscience-free journalists but Billie Piper does an excellent job in conveying the ruthless ambition and unstoppable drive of Paige Britian, whose dream is to be invited to the party she sees at the heart of the governance of the land.