FROST/NIXON. To 3 February.

London

FROST/NIXON
by Peter Morgan

Gielgud Theatre to 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 15min No interval

TICKETS: 0870 950 0915
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 November

Contest tries both combatants in fast-paced show.
The central slash is significant in the title of Peter Morgan’s gripping new play. It separates old political stager Richard Nixon, who climbed effortfully to the American Presidency before resigning mid-term after the Watergate scandal, and young TV-star David Frost who delivered a media coup de grace by eliciting an onscreen apology for Nixon’s actions never achieved through judicial processes.

Yet it also links them, in their will to power. Frost, first famous as the frontman of British 60s satire but soon touting celebrity interviews (a vacuous chat with an Australian tennis-star is shown here), had as much riding on the Nixon video-tapes as tricky Dicky himself, who reckoned on outsmarting the easy-meat young Brit’s questions and working his way back to the East Coast political mainstream.

Narrator Jim Reston says Frost led the way in understanding television, and his instinct was never righter than keeping this angry anti-Nixon radical on his team when others wanted him out. This was while dollars were being raised by the million to afford the tapings, with little sign of the advertising and syndication which would recoup the cash.

Yet Frost has to be advised on posture when confronting the former President. And the whole project could have been a washout, left to the politically apathetic Frost. Only Reston’s commitment-fuelled research eventually came up with the killer information.

Frost picks up a girlfriend on the plane, but she’s merely décor for his meeting with Nixon, or handy to fetch the late-night cheeseburgers while Frost is absorbed by his battle of wits with him. The men’s emotional identification’s explored through a late-night, possibly imaginary ‘phone talk, a scene key to the play’s psychology, as fun with shoe-styles is to its surface entertainment.

Michael Sheen doesn’t look very Frosty but he has every nostril and sinus of the vocal tones, while Frank Langella’s hulking Nixon, all heaviness in a world of media light and aware his sin is not being Jack Kennedy, is a towering tragic creation. Michael Grandage’s fast-paced production rightly has the climactic moment frozen on screen, with video and stage wonderfully intermixed throughout.

Richard Nixon: Frank Langella
Jim Reston: Elliot Cowan
David Frost: Michael Sheen
Jack Brennan: Corey Johnson
Evonne Goolagong: Kate Roscoe
John Birt: Rufus Wright
Manolo Sanchez: Amerjit Deu
Swifty Lazar/Mike Wallace: Kerry Shale
Caroline Cushing: Lydia Leonard
Bob Zelnick: Vincent Marzello

Director: Michael Grandage
Designer: Christopher Oram
Lighting: Neil Austin
Sound/Composer: Adam Cork
Video: Jon Driscoll

2006-11-20 00:43:51