Vardy v Rooney: how the Wagatha Christie trial was turned into a drama ripped straight from the tabloids

Inside the auditoriums of London’s West End theatres, underneath the dramatic friezes and marble pilasters, there are individuals who sometimes arrive after a play has begun. They go unnoticed, slipping through the stage door and quietly taking a seat somewhere in the back.

“The best thing as a producer is finishing work in the office when the show has already started, sneak in to watch a bit of it – even if you’ve seen it a million times – and listen to the audience,” says Eleanor Lloyd. Over a decade now, Lloyd has helped bring several plays to that commercial theatre district. She was one of the architects behind the dark comedy Butley, featuring Dominic West as a spiralling college lecturer. There was the transfer of Sweeney Todd, Stephen Sondheim’s hit horror-musical, that starred Imelda Staunton. Her current production in the West End, Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial, delves into a pop cultural phenomenon in the hope of finding wide appeal: the play will subsequently tour to Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre in June.

This dramatisation of the dispute between Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney – media personalities whose marriages to English footballers are the obsessions of tabloid newspapers – is the product of a risky business. As a producer, Lloyd has to compete against high running costs and an unpredictable cultural mood. “Truthfully, no one really knows what will work, and anyone who says they do are often wrong,” she says.

I was on the train home, and thinking that someone should turn this court transcript into a verbatim play. Twenty minutes later, I thought: I can do that

—  Producer Eleanor Lloyd

Her producing model often involves collaboration with companies from the non-profit sector in receipt of government funding, or of public philanthropy due to their charity status. (She is speaking to me from New York, where she will soon be bringing The Collaboration – a drama about a joint art exhibition by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat – which began its life at the subsidised Young Vic Theatre).

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That doesn’t mean there isn’t a chance of things going wrong. As a commercial producer, Lloyd relies on private investors who ultimately want to make a profit on their investments. They are the ones who often bear the brunt when a production loses more money than it raised. Reflecting on her own track record, she admits to some commercial failures: “Lots of them didn’t break even”.

What seems to keep her going are the satisfactions of a thrill-seeker, the adrenaline rush of taking a chance, and having a loyal cohort of private investors who are willing to accompany her through both the good times and the bad times. “You’re always trying to work to the bottom line, and really try to make things add up. It’s very competitive but you can’t get away from how exciting it is,” she says

Many people behind large-scale, touring productions will tell you that plans are made a few years in advance. With Vardy v Rooney, the speed of its development is practically unheard-of for a play in the West End. “From commissioning the playwright Liv Hennessy, to the first performance, was something like eight weeks,” she says.

Four years ago, when Rooney published an Instagram post detailing a sting operation where she limited access to her content to try to expose a friend leaking her private information to The Sun newspaper, Lloyd was left intrigued: “I immediately heard about it, and thought it was extraordinary”. Despite not closely following the tabloid narratives about both women throughout the years, she seemed to know about them through osmosis. “We already knew these characters so well. This felt like a new storyline for people we have a relationship with,” she says.

Famously, there was a ring of literary artifice to Rooney’s Instagram post, with its build-up to a revelation, and the quadruple-ellipsis in the final line that felt like a chapter-closer in a whodunnit: “It’s ………… Rebekah Vardy’s account.” Already, it felt like a detective story.

The real-life narrative then shifted genres, with Vardy suing Rooney for libel in the English High Court, allowing for a legal drama that riffed on a society’s obsessions with athletes’ partners: the “WAG” creations of British tabloids. The cross-examinations contained a hint of unreality, with one crucial piece of evidence discovered to have coincidentally sunk in the North Sea, while the questions themselves felt designed to plumb popular culture for previous eras, making throwbacks to the 1990s cultural icon Peter Andre and the extravagant displays of the English footballers’ partners at the 2006 World Cup.

After Vardy had lost the libel case, and was left to foot the mortifyingly expensive legal fees, Lloyd was sitting on a train home, reading analysis of the trial. She wondered about the possibility of a play being made about the dispute, thinking about the Tribunal Plays of Richard Norton-Taylor which transmute real inquiries into thrilling dramas. “I was on the train home, and thinking that someone should turn this court transcript into a verbatim play. Twenty minutes later, I thought: I can do that,” she says.

Lloyd was initially drawn to the idea because it seemed fun. She says that while there were high stakes for Vardy and Rooney, their dispute doesn’t sound overwhelmingly bleak compared with the grisly legal dispute between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. When she read the transcripts, she was surprised by the significance of the case, and the considerations it demanded of media law.

Fascinatingly, Rooney had made a novel argument for exposing Vardy’s Instagram account, claiming that there is public interest in protecting an individual’s privacy. In an era of social media influencers, personal lives are often commodified; what if they are exploited against someone’s wishes, and sold to the highest bidder? “The law was being asked to make a judgment on a contemporary, relevant issue,” says Lloyd.

For her, a swift turnaround on getting the play to the stage was a priority. (“If it’s a water cooler zeitgeist subject, you got to do it fast,” she says). Running costs were kept low by a brisk rehearsal period lasting one week. In a cautious move that reduced risks, she initially scheduled only one performance in the Wyndham Theatre – the resident production The Life of Pi allowed Vardy v Rooney to play on a Tuesday night when it had no performances. The play was immediately a fascination; some newspapers forewent normal protocol and printed reviews without waiting for an official opening night.

“It sold very quickly, so we did another six Tuesdays. That led to the longer run. It was always a step-by-step process,” she says. It soon began to run eight performances a week.

Such public court trials can tempt spectators to pick a side. Lloyd seems to remain on the sideline, sounding suspicious of Vardy’s denial of being a leak, but also unable to go along fully with Rooney’s accusation. “It felt definitive that Coleen’s stories ended up in the Sun, but it was hard to know exactly how that happened. It was hard for Coleen to prove who had access to Rebekah’s Instagram account,” she says.

Refusing to agree with one woman over another, Lloyd instead expresses compassion for both. “I have enormous amounts of respect for them. This is the life they have been given, this is where they find themselves, and what they’re both doing is try to control the narrative, and have their say. I feel a lot of sympathy for both of them but I also feel an admiration for the extent they plough their own furrow, and make it their own,” she says. Intriguingly, that sounds like she might recognise some of her own risk-taking tendencies in Vardy and Rooney.

Despite accelerating the process to get the play onstage while it’s bound to still resonate, Lloyd says there are never certainties when it comes to a new production: “Every show feels like you’re starting from scratch. You could be the most experienced producer in the world, and it’s possible that your show will not work for all sorts of reasons.”

[ The Wagatha Christie trial was jaw-dropping. This Irish-directed dramatisation? Not so much ]

There are advantages, however, to embracing the unknown, whether embarking on a brand-new play, or perhaps following an unconventional whirlwind development process. “It’s an odd, level playing field where anybody with the right show that hits the right mood can do it. A combination of idea, timing and marketing turns it into something. Everyone’s chasing that. It’s a bit like a gold rush: you know there are things out there somewhere,” she says.

Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial runs at Gaiety Theatre, Dublin 5th-7th June. gaietytheatre.ie