Frost/Nixon

Frost/Nixon is a play dramatizing the infamous 1977 interviews between reporter/talk-show host David Frost (played by Michael Sheen) and ex-President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella in a Tony award winning performance) in which Frost finally got Nixon to admit his guilt in and apologize to the American people for his role in the Watergate scandal.

The best thing I saw all weekend in NYC. While Deuce was a patient, contemplative drama that, if not for its star power, would have been better suited off-Broadway, Frost/Nixon was its antithesis. Technically and emotionally powerful, quick moving and dynamic, the play put on as much of a "show" as any musical up and down the street. Lights, sound, televisions, narrations by characters and taut writing accelerate the historical drama through different events leading up to the interviews. But here playwright Peter Morgan (who also wrote the screenplays for The Queen and The Last King of Scotland) reigns in the stampeding herd and lets the tension of the battle between two egotistical personalities, both at a point where failure means eternal defeat and exile from their respective industries, agonizingly build to its historically landmark climax. Never has paramount corruption by the figurehead of American democracy been more deliciously entertaining.

Frost/Nixon is playing through Aug 19th at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater on 45th Street, New York, NY.