With trial over, Britain’s National Theatre to mount satire inspired by phone-hacking scandal

LONDON – After months of courtroom drama comes phone hacking, the play.

Britain’s National Theatre said its next production will be “an anarchic satire about the press, the police and the political establishment” titled “Great Britain.”

The company says the play is fiction, but the description recalls the scandal over wrongdoing at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid.

Former “Doctor Who” star Billie Piper plays an ambitious editor on a scoop-hungry tabloid in the play by Richard Bean, author of hit farce “One Man, Two Guvnors.”

The cast has been rehearsing without knowing when opening night would be. They had to await verdicts in the trial of ex-editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson.

That came Tuesday with an acquittal for Brooks and a conviction for Coulson. The play opens Monday.