The Story: Cracking melodrama about race and the media in America

Letitia Wright (Yvonne) and Wilf Scolding (Jeff) in The Story at the National Theatre - (Feruza Afewerki)

A cracking melodrama about race and the media in America, Tracey Scott Wilson’s 2003 play has the pace and punch of a superior streaming drama, and twists into intriguing directions. Clint Dyer’s production features bracing, full-throated performances from the British Black Panther star Letitia Wright and US stage and screen veteran Lorraine Toussaint. It’s funny and provocative and goes places a British play might not.

We first see a black high-school choir rehearsal; then the random shooting of a white teacher from a wealthy family in a black area; then the offices of a newspaper called The Daily, where Wright’s young black hotshot reporter Yvonne is about to start work. Fast cuts and parallel or overlapping scenes are a hallmark of Wilson’s style. The setting is carefully non-specific but suggests Chicago.