In May 2022, a two-week libel trial at the High Court in London dominated the front pages of British tabloids. The case was the culmination of a long-running saga that occupied the public imagination for 3 years: the Wagatha Christie affair.
Colleen Rooney, whose husband Wayne Rooney is England’s leading scorer, has sued Rebecca Vardy, the wife of one other outstanding English footballer. Vardy sued Rooney for defamation in 2020 after Rooney accused Vardy of leaking personal stories from her private Instagram account to The Sun newspaper. Rooney’s accusation was this taken on Twitter in 2019 after surgery she performed to catch Vardy in the act, earning her the title “Wagatha Christie”.
As one might expect, the breathtaking press coverage of the proceedings was accompanied by a whirlwind of public speculation on social media. Now a theatrical dramatization of this case, Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trialattracts sellout audiences to London’s West End.
However, this will not be the end of the connections with Agatha Christie. Online players have already publicized this scandal “Scousetrap”, a mixture of Rooney’s Liverpool roots and Christie’s Mousetrap. The producer of Wagatha, Eleanor Lloyd, can also be behind the Christie’s revival of the show. Witness for the prosecutor’s officewhich has been operating at London’s County Hall since 2017.
While each plays depend on the appeal of courtroom drama, Wagatha consists entirely of real court transcripts. This places the play in the long tradition of British literal theatre. Verbatim performances, also called “documentary theater,” elevate factual storytelling by dramatizing real spoken word and private testimonies. However, there’s something fundamentally different about this literal game from those who have come before.
Spoken truths
Some practitioners of literalism bear in mind not only what participants say, but in addition exactly how they are saying it.
Leading playwright Alecky Blythe’s Work, features actors deliberately reproducing the hesitation, tone, and inconsistency of interview participants while conveying the content of their speech. Other authors include literal material of their plays but mix it with fragments imaginary dialogueblurring the line between fact and fiction.
Despite these shades of literal theater, practitioners and theorists agree that it pursues greater than just an inventive goal. In particular, it offers objective authenticity and truth recovery to which fictional plays don’t reach.
Andy Rain/Neil Hall/EPA
It is subsequently no surprise that some of Britain’s most groundbreaking verbatim productions make similar use of court transcripts. Piec Theatre (formerly often called the Tricycle theater) in north London made headlines with its shows in the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s. For example, its production The Color of Justice (1999) it was then called “the most important work of theater on the London stage”. Drawing on transcripts from a six-month inquest into the death of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, the commission sought to confront institutionalized racism. Another production, Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquest (2005) investigated the deaths of 13 unarmed civilians in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1972. Both plays questioned the concept of justice and the authenticity of official records.
By contrast, by foregrounding the history of celebrity culture and social media obsession, Wagatha Christie dramatizes Vardy’s trial against Rooney as an end in itself. There’s a complete lot of drama in it: unusual characters, contradictory witness statements and… “lost” evidence. There aren’t any broad privacy and defamation issues involved. Therefore, the hearing will happen in July 2022 result – that Rooney’s claims were “largely true” – doesn’t really matter.
This is entertainment
For the writer of the play, Liv Hennessy, it’s all about escapism and an appetite for commercialism. Calling the process the nation’s “water cooler,” Hennessy believes Wagatha will attract first-time audienceswhat could help the theater recovery after the pandemic.
This calls into query the purpose of literal theater as a form of exploration of the social and a method of illuminating underrepresented voices and tragedies.
Recent productions deal with Grenfell Tower disaster, challenges facing Generation Z AND anti-Semitism. For all their lofty ideals, literal arts usually struggle with ethics adaptation of real speech. Interviewees may disagree with the way they’re represented or fear that their identity shall be revealed. Adapting hearing transcripts comes with responsibility to the families of those involved, who may not all the time have the opportunity to be released.
While Wagatha means give up mass cultureit does this by recognizing that theater is ultimately intended to entertain. This is totally different from the moral dilemmas that typically accompany watching literal theater. Viewers may fear that by observing injustice, they’ll turn out to be complicit in it. Or that “enjoying” harrowing wordplay results in the commodification of trauma. They won’t experience this by watching Wagatha.
The play “Wagatha Christie” may subsequently change the definition of literal theater. Given the clear demand from the audience, tickets were sold out inside minutes of the premiere six more dates added – there may come some extent where celebrity-led stories happily coexist with underrepresented voices synonymous with the form. Hennessy clearly hopes that Wagatha shall be the sort of show that inspires a love of theater that transcends genres, forms and themes. For those concerned with literalism, this reinforces the incontrovertible fact that, setting aside the goal of attracting an audience, little should stand in the way Good night.
