The play is about our western free press, which, as the authors point out, is about as free as the literal Soviet Pravda of the title (Pravda means “truth”). Dominating the play is Lambert Le Roux, one of the great stage characters in recent drama. Le Roux is a charming but totally unscrupulous South African newspaper magnate bent, it seems, on dominating England’s press as he has elsewhere in the world. As we see Le Roux accomplish his aims, we see also how the press is not the organ of truth we like to think it is. The dissemination of the truth is no longer its primary goal under the Lambert Le Rouxs of our World. What is important now is what sells.
