Tabloid!!!

Truth is negotiable. Power is for sale. And Roy Bellamy is ready to make the headlines.

London, late 1980s. The Falklands War is over, Margaret Thatcher is in Downing Street and the gospel of greed is everywhere.

Returning from the conflict with ambition but few prospects, Roy Bellamy enters a world in which influence matters more than integrity—and a well-placed lie can be worth far more than the truth. Helped by powerful women, editors and fixers, Roy learns how to invent credibility, exploit intimacy, weaponise information and climb rapidly through a corrupt political and media establishment.

The higher he rises, the less human he becomes.

Inspired by Guy de Maupassant’s classic novel Bel-Ami, TABLOID!!! relocates the story from 1880s Paris to the swaggering, money-driven London of the late twentieth century. Through rapid-fire dialogue, grotesque characters, satirical songs and the glorious excess of musical theatre, it takes aim at press corruption, political hypocrisy, manufactured celebrity and the seductive power of success.

At its heart is Gary Carpenter’s opening number, The Effluence of Affluence—a phrase which captures a society in which wealth, spectacle and moral decay flow freely together.

First performed at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre on Friday 13 October 1995, TABLOID!!! was created by Nick Owen and Gary Carpenter while they were Heads of Community Arts and Music at the newly established Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.

Three decades later, it feels less like a period piece than a warning.

This full-colour, illustrated edition includes:

• the complete performance script;
• songs by Gary Carpenter;
• book by Nick Owen;
• original illustrations by Paul Warren;
• 60 pages in a practical, rehearsal-friendly format.

Bold, bawdy, angry and unapologetically theatrical, TABLOID!!! is for performers, theatre-makers, students and readers who enjoy political satire with its teeth fully intact.

Yesterday’s scandal. Today’s media. Tomorrow’s front page.