Quiz, Noel Coward Theatre, London, review: In James Graham's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire play, the audience is the jury of the 'coughing major'
With this transfer from Chichester, James Graham has pulled off off a remarkable hat-trick. He was lauded last year for having two plays (Ink and Labour of Love) running side by side in the West End. Now, almost before we've had time to draw breath, he's back at the Noel Coward Theatre, creating a terrific buzz with this exuberantly entertaining and thought-provoking piece.
Graham has a rare gift for tackling meaty, state-of-the-nation subjects with a popular (never ponderous or patronising) touch and one of his fascinations is with consequences of living in an age of populism.
In Ink, he explored this by charting Rupert Murdoch's transformation of the Sun into a best-selling tabloid. In his new play, he dissects the British love-in with quiz shows and asks whether the values of light entertainment have warped our attitudes to truth and justice
Once again, he's been inspired by real-life events. Here he re-examines the case of the so-called “coughing major”, the 2001 contestant who was accused of cheating his way to the top prize on the ITV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? His wife Diana and Welsh acquaintance, Tecwen Whittock, were said to have prompted him to the right answers with tactical coughs.
The revealing master-stroke is that the courtroom trial is elided with the game show and played out as a weird sort of dynamic, unsettling hybrid on Robert Jones's clever TV studio design with revolving neon-lit cube at its centre. And the show builds quiz-fever into its own shape. We get to play a form of pub quiz. Keypads allow us to vote at the end of each act on whether we think that the Ingrams are guilty or innocent.
We're also treated to a whirlwind history of TV quiz shows – with Keir Charles performing a range of smarmy question masters (Des O'Connor, Leslie Crowther, an uncanny Chris Tarrant et al). ITV, we learn, was shaped round shows such as Take Your Pick and The Price is Right. We see the cultural shift from quizzes as feats of memory to a multiple-choice world where one programme-maker declares that “People want an alternative to facts” (the worrying anticipation there of “alternative facts” is surely deliberate).
Revelling in their roles, the vibrant, multi-tasking cast flesh the community of quizzers who become obsessed with getting on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and work out how to beat the selection system. And we're privy to discussions about how the show is psycholgically structured to ensnare popular interest.
At the core of the piece is the riddle of why Ingram, having lost two of his “lives” in the earlier rounds, went on to hit the jackpot when the recording was resumed. At the end of the first half, his guilt looks transparent. But after the interval, with Sarah Woodward scathingly passionate as his defence barrier, you may start to have doubts.
She draws forensic attention to an editing-job on the incriminating tape, forces us to do a double-take on events we have seen by showing them in a fuller context. Is she right in suggesting Ingram was dialling up the bumbling eccentricity (amiably caught by Gavin Spokes) because of a felt need to play a role (and increase the tension) for the cameras?
Have we, Woodward asks, chosen “a more entertaining lie over a less extraordinary truth”? To what extent have been manipulated by the first half of the show itself? Quiz manages to register the personal tragedy of the Ingrams, analyse the notion of fair play (“Life is rigged!” exclaims one of his less savoury supporters), touch on present politics, overflow with information and ideas – and to be huge fun.
Another hit for Graham? No question.
Until 16 June (delfontmackintosh.co.uk)
