A New Trial for Nixon

Theater | Review of: Frost/Nixon

By ERIC GRODE
April 23, 2007

History has condemned President Nixon to a rousing defeat at the hands of David Frost. On the evidence of "Frost/Nixon," though, a recount may be in order.

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Joan Marcus

'Frost/Nixon' revisits, and reinterprets, a contentious moment in political history, Eric Grode writes. Above, Michael Sheen as David Frost and Frank Langella as President Nixon in 'Frost/Nixon.'

Peter Morgan's superficial but diverting gloss on the 1977 interviews between these two men takes its share of liberties with the facts, but the central story remains intact. Here and in real life, Mr. Frost paid the disgraced former president handsomely for the privilege of slaughtering him afresh on national television — an event that made global news and cemented Mr. Frost's reputation.

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.

"Frost/Nixon" spends a full hour — about 30 minutes too many — building up to the fateful interview sessions. The negotiations between the two camps were intense, sparring over everything from Nixon's fee to the interview location to the amount of time the topic of Vietnam would receive. Nixon was desperate to rehabilitate his image, but his wasn't the only reputation at risk: Frost faced financial ruin if the interview flopped. The only way to prevent that, as he saw it, was to nail his adversary to the wall on Watergate — to "give Richard Nixon the trial he never had."

That quote actually comes from Jim Reston (Stephen Kunken), a dyed-in-the-wool leftie under Frost's employ; the scenes in which Reston and the rest of frost's contingent map out their plan of attack offer a fairly compelling glimpse of gotcha journalism at work. Reston is one of two narrators who step forward periodically like seconds at a duel, spelling out bits of information that often don't need spelling out. Reston continually nudges Frost to go for the jugular, while Jack Brennan (Corey Johnson), Nixon's hawkish chief of staff, articulates Nixon's side to the audience.

Frost and Nixon huddle into their respective corners between tapings of the climactic interviews; Frost's handlers barrage him with tips, while the more seasoned Nixon focuses primarily on keeping his brow and upper lip sweat-free. The mythic 1960 presidential debate with John F. Kennedy, about which it is said that a stubbly and perspiring Nixon won on substance and lost on style, weighs heavily on the former president here. It is at this point that Mr. Morgan massages reality, supplying Frost with the historically dubious equivalent of a 10th-round knockout. (He has also added a surreal and captivating late-night phone conversation, in which Nixon manages to bolster, intimidate, commiserate with, and unburden himself to Frost all at once.)

In his screenplay to "The Queen," Mr. Morgan turned the aftermath of Princess Diana's death into another generational stand-off between two public figures ostensibly working in tandem. But while "The Queen" vaulted beyond its subject matter to address crucial questions of leadership and accountability, "Frost/Nixon" is content to amble as a modest entertainment with a thin overlay of political commentary. Mr. Morgan has described the play as "an intellectual ‘Rocky,'" and that description rings truer than he may have wished.

Throughout, Mr. Morgan's Frost is at a clear disadvantage, a British talk-show host with roaming eyes, immovable hair, and a furry paunch right out of "Austin Powers." Mr. Sheen, so nuanced as Tony Blair in "The Queen," doesn't do anything wrong with the role of Frost, but he also doesn't do anything surprising. For a man whose devil-may-care public image is meant to clash with a paralyzing fear of inadequacy, Mr. Sheen shows far too much comfort with each feint and hesitation. A little-discussed danger with acclaimed stage performances, particularly ones that travel from a successful run elsewhere, is that everything has become too polished, too frozen. Mr. Sheen's disciplined, maddeningly competent portrayal reads like a jaded version of something that was once thrilling.

"Comfort" is not a word typically used in relation to Nixon, and Mr. Langella conveys the broken leader's lack of ease with heartrending bravery. The familiar bits of physical shorthand are in evidence — the hunched posture, the rumbling voice, the jowly irresolution — but Mr. Langella never delivers a mere impersonation. As Nixon labors to assume control of this high-tech inquisition, wincing pre-emptively at the opprobrium that he fears will follow him until he dies, Mr. Langella suffuses the stage with Nixon's savage intelligence and almost inexplicable appetite for self-destruction.

Despite (or perhaps because of ) Nixon's palpable unease at being filmed, playwrights can't help force shoving him in front of the cameras. "Secret Honor," the 1983 one-man show adapted memorably for the screen by Robert Altman, turned Nixon's own surveillance cameras into a mocking hall of mirrors. Now Mr. Grandage and set designer Christopher Oram fill the back of the stage with dozens of TV screens. At first, the two onstage cameras stay at a cool reserve as they replicate the footage from the actual interviews — Nixon's odd hand inflections, Frost's almost cartoonishly casual posture. But as Frost moves in for the kill, so do the cameras. And for the first time in "Frost/Nixon," the enormous simulcast poses a compelling threat to the events onstage — an intense close-up of Mr. Langella's haggard and bloodshot Nixon, "swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing, and defeat," to quote Reston's extraneous narration.

When he finally meets Nixon before the first interview, Reston expresses surprise at the level of affinity he feels toward his prey. "If you've spent that long hating a man," he says, "in the end a kind of relationship develops. An intimacy." More than a decade after his death, America's similarly fraught relationship with Richard Nixon shows no sign of abating. Thanks to Mr. Morgan's padded but engaging efforts, we have Nixon to kick around once again. And thanks to the triumphant Mr. Langella, Tricky Dick is kicking right back.

Open run (242 W. 45th St., between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-239-6200).

A New Trial for Nixon

Theater | Review of: Frost/Nixon

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