** The Story, Raleigh Little Theatre--Tabloid theater unintentionally mimics tabloid journalism when playwright Tracey Scott Wilson fields a cadre of straw characters to Illustrate a Problem--in a plot that criticizes a journalist for doing more or less the same thing. Clearly based on the 1980 "Jimmy's World" affair at the Washington Post, when a reporter was stripped of a Pulitzer Prize and fired for fictitious reporting, this rather self-righteous reply fares little better: Its one-dimensional characters haven't got a life off the page, either.

African-American editor Pat (an intense Jackie Marriott) is written only to indict the newsroom politics of racial uplift, burying all negative community news in an endless cavalcade of puff pieces. Oleaginous reporter Neil (George Hill) provides a black update of the "good old boy." And central character Yvonne (Chaunesti Lyon) has no internal integrity as a journalist or a dramatic character. Her motivations remain a mystery until a few closing lines "explain" her behavior--just before it's roundly condemned again. Ironically, Wilson ultimately proves neither theater nor journalism should be this reductive, exploitational or focused on lurid acts at the expense of understanding the human foibles that precipitate them. (Closes Sept. 25.)

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