'Is the surface ultimately all there is?’ It could easily be the title of a book by John Stott, but this is the question currently confronting audiences at London’s Cottesloe Theatre in a new play by Nicholas Wright.
The Reporter is based on the remarkable life of the BBC correspondent and film-maker (and former MI6 agent) James Mossman, and specifically his last eight years. It begins with him ‘reporting’ on his own death, reading the suicide note he left behind in his Norfolk cottage: ‘I can’t bear it any more, though I don’t know what “it” is.’
In his distinctive BBC tones, he comments: ‘The “it” is cradled inside a pair of inverted commas, as though to protect it against enquiry. But a reporter must enquire. It’s what we do. What is “it”? How could a man in whose death “it” played such an intimate part not know?’
The purpose of the play thus declared, The Reporter goes on to examine the social climate in the years before Mossman’s death in 1971 and searches for the truth behind his bewildering end.
What lies beneath the surface? The play asks the question both of his journalistic career and of his relationship with his Canadian lover Louis Hanssen, switching cleverly between his two lives. The brilliant, handsome Mossman is seen interviewing the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, over his support for the US President Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War, before the furore over his acerbic style gets him reassigned to presenting arts programmes.
Like his career, his relationship with Hanssen reaches great heights and depths but never plateaus. Hanssen dies of an accidental overdose three years before Mossman’s death.
The Reporter is like an enthralling detective story. An example of apologetics at its best, it understands the power of asking questions. By doing so, it leads the audience to the conclusion that the only explanation for Mossman’s suicide is his conviction that there has to be more to human existence than ‘the surface’ – whether at the BBC or in his relationship with Hanssen. It is the discovery of this truth that persuades Mossman that he cannot cope. Killing himself is the only way out. It is an act of both self-realisation and despair.
The audience is left to reflect on the big questions about human existence, purpose and identity.
I think John Stott would approve.
The Reporter closed on 30 June 2007.
