From Wagatha Christie to Donald Trump: can rapid-fire real-life drama upstage the news?

Dramatising the latest watercooler story doesn't guarantee you box-office success. The stiffest competition may come from reality's own high drama

Just before the curtain came up on Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial, producer Eleanor Lloyd spoke to the audience about its breakneck transposition from real-life courtroom drama to stage show and the high-wire act" that such theatre becomes. The part-verbatim show dramatises the case that was detonated soon after Coleen Rooney dropped her Instagram grenade and Rebekah Vardy filed for libel.

Having run in the high court and been reported in the media only a few months earlier, here it was again, reprising the best lines, from chipolata-gate to Davy Jones's Locker. Laying its public interest debate aside, it was indisputably the watercooler story of the spring and summer, its incredible WhatsApp turns holding us rapt.