The Story, at the National Theatre’s Olivier Theatre, is the most disappointing production I have seen this year. Stale, stagnant and shouty, it is occasionally funny, but buried beneath so much unnecessary filler that the gripping thriller it desperately wants to be never quite emerges.

As a journalism student, I desperately wanted to love The Story. Its exploration of journalistic ethics, professional ambition and the devastating consequences irresponsible reporting can have on a community should provide the foundations for a gripping, provocative thriller. And somewhere beneath all the noise, I genuinely believe there’s a very good play waiting to emerge.

Quite why The Story is being performed on what looks like the set of High School Musical, I’m not sure. The blocking is uninspired, with scenery sometimes moved using automation and at other times simply pushed about the place. Aside from two spectacular reveals using the back wall, the production may as well have been performed in total darkness, under spotlights, using only the set pieces that move. We are asked to believe in a place and community that we simply never see in any concrete way. Instead, we are offered fragments of a world that never feels fully realised, constantly shifting between locations and conversations without allowing us to settle into either.

And for Christ’s sake, if you’re going to tackle racism, stereotyping and just about every other social issue, it is not enough to stand there and shout indirectly at an audience. So much of the dialogue concerns the neglect and closure of spaces built to sustain and unite the Black community, yet we see remarkably little of the lives affected by their disappearance. When these issues emerge naturally through the characters and their relationships, there is something genuinely captivating about the piece. But too often another point is made about a world the production has barely allowed us to experience. The themes are important, but their importance alone cannot give them dramatic weight.

And again, all of this happens on the set of High School Musical. It simply doesn’t have the impact it seems to think it does. Either a minimalist approach or outright realism might have been the perfect tonic, but the production commits to neither, lingering awkwardly somewhere between the two. The result is neither purposeful nor particularly pleasing to the eye.

The script contains many problems, the first being that Pat, played by the utterly enthralling Lorraine Toussaint, is not the protagonist of the piece. Characterisation and performance merge seamlessly to create a woman whose history feels genuinely lived-in. Pat has been directly hurt by the very community she continues to defend, placing her personal experiences, professional responsibilities and moral convictions in conflict. Although she occasionally takes command of the action, it is as the central figure through whom this story could unfold that she offers the greatest dramatic potential. Her struggle to do right by both the story and the community, even when she has every reason to turn her back on it, is far more compelling than the narrative the play chooses to follow.

Instead, we follow Yvonne, played by Letitia Wright, who does her best with what she’s been given. An ambitious young journalist, she’s determined to prove herself at the newspaper, where her boyfriend, Jeff (Wilf Scolding), is the resident nepo baby. There is considerably more to Yvonne than initially meets the eye, but the script is so preoccupied with keeping its secrets that it neglects to make her particularly compelling in the meantime. By the time those secrets begin to unravel, the increasingly convoluted narrative has already undermined our investment in her.

There are far too many characters competing for attention, many seemingly introduced to illustrate the neglect and gradual dismantling of the community rather than contribute anything meaningful to the drama. The stage gets busy, and this should be exciting, but these fragments rarely develop beyond proving a point. Despite the relentless exposition, so little of it feels useful that we find ourselves constantly trying to connect the dots. Not in a fun, whodunnit sort of way, but in a ‘Why have I paid over £60 to rewrite the play in my head just so I can follow what’s going on?’ sort of way.

Pat, Yvonne and Neil, played by Ashley Thomas, find themselves competing to uncover the same story, apparently driven more by professional ego than any convincing dramatic motivation. Their investigations send them down endless rabbit holes, which should be thrilling, and there is certainly something in the script that works, but my God, this play is boring. Worse still are the prolonged sequences in which private conversations overlap, illuminated by lighting arrangements resembling a Venn diagram to show who’s talking to whom. Information is repeated, scenes linger long after they’ve made their point, and these unnecessarily complicated exchanges frequently lead to characters arriving at precisely the same conclusion. Much of what we’re told could surely have been communicated through performance alone. It feels criminal that a production this static should occupy a theatre renowned for its kinetic energy.

For an evening that feels so unnecessarily drawn out, the running time is difficult to justify. The end of Act One offers a tantalising glimpse of the gripping thriller this production could have been, and the opening of Act Two actually delivers on that promise. Suddenly, we are inside the drama, experiencing events rather than simply being told about them. It feels like the perfect starting point for the world to unravel in a more convincing, dramatically satisfying way. In fact, I could almost forgive Act One its many shortcomings if the second half continued along the thread it has begun to weave. Instead, that sensation is abruptly slashed away, and we’re returned to the same theatrical gimmicks that were barely exciting the first time around. All the wrong moments are given time to breathe, while those that might genuinely thrill us are hurried away almost as quickly as they arrive.

And then, just as I’ve almost given up hope, the production delivers an astonishing final image. It’s disturbing, ominous and genuinely theatrical, the sort of moment that reminds you exactly what the Olivier Theatre is capable of. For a fleeting moment, everything I’ve been waiting for seems to arrive at once. There is something wonderfully unsettling about the image, a sense of consequence and danger that the preceding two hours have struggled to conjure. But spectacle alone cannot manufacture an emotional climax. However impressive the staging, the moment feels disconnected from the drama that has brought us there. We finish at the level where we should have started.

Strip it back to ninety minutes, give its characters room to exist beyond the arguments they’re required to make, and allow the story to unfold through action rather than endless explanation. It could entertain, challenge perceptions and provoke conversations long after the audience has left the theatre. But simply existing and having something to say is not the way good theatre is made.