April 23, 2007

Reliving Watergate with 'Frost/Nixon' on Broadway

"Frost/Nixon," the (somewhat fictional) stage adaption of the televized David Frost interviews of Richard Nixon just three years after Watergate, opened on Broadway last night to almost universal praise, especially for Frank Langella as Tricy Dick.

Frost, as played by Michael Sheen, gets Nixon to utter phrases such as: "I'm saying that when the president does it, that means it's not illegal." However, some reviewers note that writer Peter Morgan does take some liberties. "There's a bit of fiction - around 15 per cent - and one or two things I could do without," the real Frost told the Evening Standard.)

"Frost/Nixon" will play through August 19 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, located at 242 W. 45th St., map. Regular tickets are priced from $36.25 to $96.25 with premium seats from $176.25 to $201.25 and student rush for $26.25.

Sunday was also the 13th anniversary of the death of Nixon, who died at New York's Cornell Medical Center following a stroke.

The reviews:

Daily News - "Watching Frank Langella play the disgraced 37th President in Peter Morgan's "Frost/Nixon," it's hard to resist inching forward in your seat to better bask in the radiant glow. It's not that he expertly apes Richard Nixon, though his velvety growl hits the right notes. It's that the Tony-winning actor conjures Nixon's sad, arrogant, buffoonish essence from jowls to toes to fingertips, which he wags like semaphore flags. Langella is, simply, a knockout."

Variety - "A hit in London, Michael Grandage's lucid production burnishes the play's merits as stage writing, but there's no question about the potency of Frank Langella and Michael Sheen's blazing performances."

New York Times - "Most of the credit for this victory belongs to a truly titanic performance from the man playing the famously sweaty victim of a cool medium. That’s Frank Langella, whose portrayal of Nixon is one of those made-for-the-stage studies in controlled excess in which larger-than-life seems truer-to-life than merely life-size ever could."

Newsday - "Nixon's fictional late-night phone call can be excused as dramatic license. But someone should have corrected such foreign blunders as putting the word "Hills" in the name of the Beverly Hilton and having people drive up to San Clemente from L.A. The real Frost has said that, despite his "delight" in the play's success, he would have preferred it to be accurate. Same here."

Associated Press - "The play is awash in urgency, both verbally and physically. Under Grandage's whiz-bang direction, it never stops moving, particularly while setting up the ultimate confrontation between talk-show host and subject."

Sun - "But by handing the role of Nixon to Frank Langella, an actor who has found the hypnotic allure in everyone from Dracula to a talking lizard, Mr. Morgan and director Michael Grandage have all but upended the outcome. Due in part to Mr. Morgan's conception and in part to a calcified performance by Michael Sheen, Frost doesn't have a prayer this time out. Nixon broods near the end of "Frost/Nixon" that he erred in choosing a career that hinged on being liked. He may remain defiantly, perversely unlovable in Mr. Langella's masterful hands; he is, however, a source of awe and almost unbearable pathos."

Washington Post - "Langella plays Richard M. Nixon to Sheen's David Frost in this juicy drama about their famous 1977 series of television encounters, and it proves to be one of the most remarkable Broadway performances in years. Not that Langella simply gets the awkward mannerisms right: the cartoonishly husky voice, the hunched shoulders, the impatient hands. It's that he manages to make of this disgraced former president, the only Oval Office occupant ever to resign, a figure of authentic pathos."

Post - "You watch with the kind of fascinated delight rare in the theater as Langella and Sheen go at one another with the dedicated skill of a Muhammad Ali and a Joe Frazier."

USA Today - "Sheen introduces Frost as a bit of a dandy, playing up the celeb-courting, playboy rep that made some question his credentials for interrogating a deposed world leader. Whether schmoozing with superagent Swifty Lazar (wryly impersonated by Stephen Rowe, who also has a stab at Mike Wallace) or cozying up to a passenger on a flight to L.A., he has shades of Austin Powers and Dudley Moore."

Newark Star-Ledger - "Even people hazy about the Nixon years are likely to be grabbed by the personal story unfolding at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, where the show opened yesterday. Not since "Doubt" has a Broadway drama mesmerized viewers into such a collective pin-drop hush."

Bloomberg - "Frank Langella makes Nixon clever without glorification, Tricky Dick without repulsiveness, unsparing in the growls without stressing the jowls. From Michael Sheen, Frost gets charm without lovableness, smartness not without stumbles; morally he is at best a fascinating, off-white knight."

Hartford Courant - "From the start, Langella - looking more like Gore Vidal than Nixon - makes the president a boiling mass of contradictions, hateful yet somehow likable, humorous and shrewd, often rambling and sentimental but also calculating in his ability to hold Frost at bay."

Los Angeles Times - "This Donmar Warehouse production, directed with crackling intensity by Michael Grandage, re-creates for American audiences the London sensation of last year. For those unable to get to New York, a bit of consolation: Ron Howard is slated to direct the movie adaptation."

Modern Fabulosity - "Where Frost/Nixon finds its strength and saving grace is in Michael Grandage's superb direction, which underscores the importance of television in the downfall of the president; a bank of television screens, lifted high above the stage, are used to great effect in chronicling Nixon's inability to see himself as others did. Ultimately, Grandage and Sheen make Frost/Nixon better than the play actually is…and in the process, also make it worth seeing."

Earlier: Tickets still available for 'Frost/Nixon' opening night
'Frost/Nixon' to play Broadway in spring 2007
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Unauthorized Republican walking tour

April 23, 2007 01:17 PM in Broadway

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