British writer James Graham’s West End hit steps its audience through the creation of what was, in its day, a wholly novel media product – Rupert Murdoch’s legendary and ultimately loathsome tabloid The Sun.

Murdoch’s is a major voice in the play. His stated aim? Disruption, pure and simple. But the real human interest story here is that of Larry Lamb, the 40-year-old Yorkshire-born newspaperman charged with creating a new paper from the wreckage of the lame dog of a masthead Murdoch bought for a song in 1964.

Like the Antipodean Murdoch, Lamb (Nick Curnow) is an outsider among Fleet Street editors. Working class and northern to boot, his skills are noted but he’ll never be part of The Establishment. Likewise, the journos Lamb hires in Act I are largely devoted to the building of a rag-tag team, a skeleton crew of hacks he rallies into an editorial hit squad dedicated to putting old formulas to the sword.

The Sun, Lamb believes, must be not just a paper for the people, but of the people; something breezy, irreverent, unpatronising and focused on giving people what they want rather than what the higher-ups consider good for them. At the same time, Lamb is determined...