Review: Frost/Nixon by Austin Playhouse
by Michael Meigs
Almost thirty years had gone by when British dramatist Peter Morgan wrote this piece. The Gielgud Theatre picked it up from an "off-West-End" theatre in 2006. A Broadway production ran for 137 performances in 2007. Frank Langella won both a Tony Award for best actor, as well as the corresponding Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards.
Thirty years is about the right lapse of time before one exorcises demons and rehabilitates felons. Pain is remembered but no longer throbs, and different issues occupy the public mind.
The audience members at the Austin Playhouse were almost without exception of an age to have vivid memories of Watergate, Nixon's resignation, and David Frost's 1977 interviews, watched by some 45 million persons. That is reportedly still the record viewership for a televised political interview.
The play is structured as a hunt, a negotiation, and a verbal contest. Don Toner and his cast keep the suspense tight, almost convincing us that we don't know how this will turn out. The pull of the piece, however, is in the acting.
Impersonation is a tricky business. We grant the actors some license, but we want to see those tics, gestures, and vocal mannerisms that allow us to make believe that they've assumed the targeted identities. I can't judge David Stahl as Frost, for I have never seen the original; I was in West Africa during the Watergate/resignation/interview sequence. Stahl projects a florid, verbal risk-taking personality and an accent that convince me. Michael Stuart in the role of Nixon has a lumbering, uncertain charisma, and he deftly captures the man's gestures and vocal rhythms.
Beyond that, however, these two actors give the illusion of a chemistry and a growing affinity between Frost and Nixon. The journalist out for a career-saving scoop develops an understanding and an intuition about the isolated ex-president. Nixon responds, moving out of his wounded reticence and denial into reflections, first off camera and then eventually on camera. The piece is structured to culminate in Nixon's acknowledgment that he had participated in the Watergate cover-up and that he regretted he had "let the American people down."
Before we get there, there's a good deal of vicarious bear-baiting. On Frost's staff Huck Huckaby as Jim Reston, Benjamin Summers as John Birt and Ben Wolfe as Bob Zelnick are adamant about skewering Nixon for his crimes. Counter weighting them as Nixon's chief of staff Jack Brennan, Kenneth Wayne Bradley applies a military man's sense of strategy, tactics and loyalty to his commander. The play shows Brennan barging into the midst of the final interview, breaking it up; in fact, in the 1977 interview on Watergate, Brennan held up a note for Frost, who misread it and called for a pause.
As with that incident, the play is occasionally loose with the facts in order to make the action more dramatic. For example, Bradley as Brennan appears initially wearing the uniform of a Marine full colonel, an impossibility in his position as private chief of staff to a resigned president. The historical Brennan had served as Nixon's military aide, accompanying him aboard the final helicopter flight away from the White House. Brennan eventually resigned his commission in order to serve Nixon.
Frost/Nixon and Ron Howard's 2008 movie portray Nixon under the influence of drink, calling Frost for a late night rambling conversation. This is probably an invention of the writer, for Nixon rarely drank. To their credit, director Don Toner and Michael Stuart as Nixon do not rely on that half-glass of whiskey in Nixon's hand. Stuart gives the impression that he is calling out of loneliness rather than out of the bottle.
It's a curious evening, portraying a self-satisfied triumph of the liberal staff, the financial success of Frost's risky endeavor, and the shriving of the exiled king, once he admits to himself the impossibility of a return to influence.
Yes, it was a long time ago, but it seems to me too early yet to fit that sequence of events into myth. Richard Nixon needs to lie quiet in his grave for a while longer yet. If you go, go for the acting of Michael Stuart and for David Stahl.
Rave review by Olin Meadows at AustinOnStage.com, October 1
Review by Ryan E. Johnson at examiner.com, October 2
Review by Robert Faires in the Austin Chronicle, October 8: [Michael Stuart's] "contained, nuanced performance just keeps gathering power as the show progresses. [ . . . .] Stuart creates a compelling portrait of Nixon, by turns reserved, resentful, rueful, competitive, sly in strategy, ungainly in social situations, protective of his legacy, appreciative of an adversary. He makes us feel the weight upon the man's shoulders, the burden of the mistakes he recognizes, and his hunger for redemption in the eyes of the American people, and that gives us a Nixon much easier to comprehend, and even to like, than the real one ever was."
Review by Javier Sanchez at the Daily Texan on-line, October 8
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Frost/Nixon
by Peter Morgan
Austin Playhouse
