Theatre review: The Story

Sometimes when a new Artistic Director takes over a building it can feel like there's been a deliberate effort to get designers to reimagine how the stages can be used, and as we go into Indhu Rubasingham's second year at the National I can't help wondering if that's what we're getting there: After Electra/Persona's staircase going down to meet the front of the Lyttelton Stalls, Anna Fleischle cuts the front apron off the Olivier and adds a back wall to turn the vast stage into something comparatively intimate, a high school basketball court to frame Clint Dyer's production of The Story. This mix of the epic and the intimate is something that's reflected elsewhere in Tracey Scott Wilson's 2003 play, which has a large supporting ensemble building up the background of racial tensions ramping up in Philadelphia, but is ultimately focused on a quartet of journalists and the way they investigate them.A white teacher has been shot dead in a predominantly black neighbourhood; his widow…