Quiz
By James Graham
Directed By Daniel Evans
Designed by Robert Jones
Music by Ben & Max Ringham
Minerva Theatre at Chichester Festival Theatre
Wednesday 15th November 2017, 14.45
CAST
They all play many roles (except Charles & Diana) so I scanned the programme in. I list them below as otherwise they are not searchable by name on this blog.
Nadia Albina
Paul Bazely
Keir Charles
Greg Haiste
Mark Meadows
Henry Pettigrew
Gavin Spokes
Stephanie Street
Jay Villiers
Lizzie Winkler
Sarah Woodward
We booked this one as soon as it was advertised. Last time James Graham was at Chichester with This House we skipped it, avoiding a political theme. Then several people told us it was the best play in Chichester all year, by which time we couldn’t find seats … and the West End transfer is so much a last resort for us. We loathe those old West End theatres. Graham knows them … he currently has two plays in production, Ink and Labour of Love.
This play is based on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? the quiz show, which was hosted by Chris Tarrant. It’s a true story. In 2001, Major Charles Ingram became the third million pound prize winner. His brother-in-law Adrian Pollock, and his wife, Diana Ingram had both competed before, and both got to the £32,000 prize. Adrian had worked out the issues were (a) getting through on the phone to apply (which is where the TV company made its premium rate call money … Diana had spent £600 trying to get on the show), and (b) being fastest to answer the question to the eight or ten would-be contestants, which was always ordering four facts, A, B, C and D. Adrian built a machine to practise pressing the four buttons at speed. The rules only allowed one appearance, and Diana persuaded Major Ingrams to apply and coached him.
Diana (Stephanie Street)on the show with Chris Tarrant (Keir Charles), Her brother, Adrian (Henry Pettigrew), is watching from the audience.
Then came the allegations of cheating against Major Ingram, his wife, Diana and Tecwen Whittock. Wittock was one of the devotees of the show who had been trying to get onto an actual programme. They were accused of coughing in the studio audience to point Charles Ingram to the right answers. Diana was accused of gasping “No” when it looked as though Ingram was choosing the wrong answer. The case went to court in 2003, and all were found guilty and given suspended sentences.
The continuing story of Tecwen, Adrian, Diana and Charles is intercut with the court case and in Act One, with a history of quiz shows with a reprise of old TV quiz shows like Take Your Pick, Bullseye and The Price Is Right with impersonations of the original TV game hosts. We start out though with a pub quiz in a Midlands pub. There is additionally the story off how the programme’s creators persuaded ITV to produce Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (fascinating) and how it went global, with versions in 160 countries, in some of which it is still playing. There’s also the story of how, a year or so in to the programme’s run, ITV broadened the appeal. Too many middle class quiz enthusiasts were competing, and they wanted more working class competitors, so they added popular music and popular TV questions. It was apparent that they could also tailor questions as the quiz was in progress.
Selling the show concept to ITV (one of my favourite scenes)
In the play, Diana, Tecwen and Adrian are in the real audience at times. A live TV camera is brought on to stage to film the quiz for the large monitors (with the questions etc overlaid). At one point they film people commenting on the case in front of a green screen, so that the big TV monitors then show them with other backgrounds. Technically excellent.
The thing about the play is we, the audience, get to decide guilt. We each have an interactive A / B / C / D press pad on a lanyard, and also a clip board with pen, where we can answer questions in a couple of the quizzes in Act One … these are handed in for judging in the interval. At several points in Act One, audience members are brought out to compete (and win an ice cream).
On our afternoon, at the interval we voted on the court case evidence so far, which was the prosecution case. 87% of us (me too) voted “guilty.” In the second act, the story is presented from the Ingram point of view … they were coughed at everywhere they went, their dog was kicked to death, their cat shot, their children bullied at school. The case had huge publicity and no one likes a cheat. We once saw the real Ingram couple in Waitrose, shopping quietly, just after the court case. I have to say no one disturbed them or coughed but people were staring and they were strenuously avoiding eye contact. I recall feeling sorry for them.
The Ingrams in public – assailed by people coughing wherever they went
The second act relies on the persuasiveness of the defence counsel (Sarah Woodward), but much more on the performance of Gavin Spokes as Charles Ingram. He has to make us believe in him, just as the QC has to knock down the TV tapes (remixed from five sources with the coughing brought up in volume), and the prosecution argument. The main argument was that Ingram was really bad in the first few questions, using two of his three lifelines, then there was a roll over (the show ended, he returned to film the rest the new day). He had changed his style, spending ages deliberating, going to wrong answers, before getting the right one. The producers were sure he was cheating. Diana had calculated that you stayed on by being entertaining, so he played up the military man and the apparent moving to wrong answers. The unspoken undercurrent is that the show could almost certainly switch its questions (definitely overnight) and you did best by being entertaining so they kept you going without throwing you an incredibly hard one.
Charles Ingram gets one right
I recall chatting about the show with a friend around that time. He was saying if either of us ever tried to get on (and I hasten to say we never tried), we could be the “Phone a Friend” for each other because he was brilliant on sport, nature and film, while I (modest cough … no! not a cough!) could get literature, history, geography and music. We both agreed that the “Ask The Audience” lifeline should be used early, in the first few questions, because it would include a popular TV one we’d never get … based on Coronation Street or Eastenders. That’s exactly what Ingram did.
The vote at the end is entirely dependent on Gavin Spokes bringing Ingram to life as a character and gaining our sympathy, and vitally, our belief in his honesty. I think it was 56% of us (including me) who voted “not guilty” at the end of Act 2, up from 13% for “not guilty” at the end of Act One. They then showed the scores for the previous eleven performances on the monitors as we were leaving, and the range was 52% to 66% for “not guilty.” On our day, Gavin Spokes was brilliant. I reckon the 66% day must have seen him on even better form.
The story is based on a book Bad Show: The Quiz, the Cough, the Millionaire Major by Bob Woffinden and James Plankett. You can find pictures on-line, and Gavin Spokes wears an identical shirt to the real Major Ingram. It is a tragedy too, in that the Ingrams lives were ruined by bankruptcy, he was asked to leave the army and they had to move. The book reveals that 192 coughs were recorded during Ingram’s appearance, and 19 were considered significant. But how was Ingram to know which was which? Also Whittock, the suspected cougher, went on directly after Ingram and was eliminated at £1000, so hardly a foolproof genius. The three accused and Chris Tarrant at least must have agreed to the play using their identities. James Graham calls it “constructed reality.” Not surprisingly, the Ingrams and Whittock are largely vindicated for a majority of the audience, not a large one on the 52% day, but still larger than the majority that started Brexit. Chris Tarrant said at the time that he had not noticed the alleged prompts. It’s also fair to say the TV company didn’t set out to get them, so much as there was a growing sense of “this is weird!” among the production team that escalated and solidified into a belief that they were cheating.
The set is a circular stage, which contra-rotates, with a neon cube on it. At the rear are ten seats for actors as would be contestants, and stairs leading up to a balcony which is where the judge appears. I was 100% sure it was designed by Alex Lowne, because it was so extremely similar to Dedication- Shakespeare and Southampton at The Nuffield Theatre, but no it was by Robert Jones. The lights can change in the cube or on the outer rotating ring, so for example when Ingram at home walks round with a lawn mower, a section lights up green with each step. Highly effective. A minor grouse, from our top row seats in Row G several speeches from halfway down the stairs had a neon line of the top of the cube right across the actor’s face. That would be remedied, I think, by the actor simply coming one step lower on the stairs.
Every actor plays multiple roles, switching seamlessly at high speed. Spot on direction (except for that extra stair – watch from the top row!), spot on lighting. Keir Charles gives us every one of Chris Tarrant’s mannerisms writ large, which is very funny (if you’ve ever see the show). Earlier, he does Des O’Connor, Bruce Forsyth and Leslie Crowther well … but Tarrant is the one he really nails perfectly. I loved the play.
I agree with some criticism that the old quiz show pastiches render it a little “bitty” in Act One. On the other hand, the TV monitor screens in Bullseye were used to terrific effect. They use the Yes / No contest with two audience members, just as they did in Take Your Pick. I used the Yes / No contest in one of my ELT textbooks back in 1979. When we did the revised editions, hundreds of users were asked to rate the 160 units in book 1 and 2 in order of quality. The Yes / No contest came 2nd out of 160. When we did our ELT stage shows, I always had it up my sleeve for emergencies, or as filler. We never wrote it in, but used it quickly once or twice in many of our shows. I’m leading up to saying that I’m way better at asking the questions and forcing a yes or no than here … sorry! Also, there are techniques (Did you say “yes”?)… and you ban nodding. Because the game is played extensively in North Africa, I always doubled it to a minute long for Libyan or Algerian students, and rarely caught them out. As a contestant, the rule is simple. Think that you’re Irish. Reputedly, Irish Gaelic eschewed ‘yes’ and ‘no’ which is why the Irish say: I am. Indeed. I have. I haven’t. I did. Indeed I can. I did not. That’s right / That’s wrong is another good one. If you’re going to see it, and find yourself in the front row, I might have won you an ice-cream.
****
WHAT THE PAPERS SAID
4
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ****
Michael Billington, The Guardian ****
Anne Treneman, The Times ****
Jane Edwards, Sunday Times ****
Mark Shenton, TheStage ****
3
Anne Cox, StageReview ***
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
DANIEL EVANS (Director)
Forty Years On by Alan Bennett, Chichester 2017
American Buffalo, by David Mamet, Wyndham’s Theatre, London
KEIR CHARLES
The White Devil, RSC, 2014
The Roaring Girl, RSC 2014
Arden of Faversham, RSC 2014
SARAH WOODWARD
Nell Gwynne, by Jessica Swale, Globe 2015
Richard II, Globe 2015
MARK MEADOWS
The Magna Carta Plays, Salisbury Playhouse, 2015
King John, Globe, 2015
Richard III, Trafalgar Studios, 2014
The Spire, Salisbury Playhouse, 2012
PAUL BAZELY
The White Devil, Wanamaker Playhouse 2017
NADIA ALBINA
Macbeth, Globe 2016 (porter)
Hecuba, RSC 2015 (Cassandra)
Othello, RSC 2015 (Duke of Venice)
Othello, Wanamaker 2017 (Bianca)