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.

Grey Gardens

A musical about the Bouvier Beale family of East Hampton, NY, relatives of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. It's based on the 1975 documentary of the same name, made by the Maysles brothers. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Edie" were once high-class socialites but later became Long Island's most notorious recluses. Act I portrays the family before their descent, and Act II shows their recluse days.

It's beautifully tragic and tragically funny. Christine Ebersole, in a Tony award winning performance, perfectly portrays both Edith and Little "Edie" (the former in Act 1 and the latter in Act 2). Clearly, it's not your typical Broadway musical fare, but that's why it's great. It's like seeing a super-Indie film playing on three screens at your local AMC multiplex. Here, Broadway doesn't mean hammed up and glitz-ified; it just means really really well done. You find yourself laughing at these bizarre and awkward people. But everything saddens when you remember this really happened. Edie's bright young promise did end up with her in a house overrun with cats, wearing a head scarf and alone with her crazed mother. And if that can happen to a member of one of America's most esteemed families, how can there be any hope for us ordinary folks? (That last sentence would be much more powerful if my last name weren't "Kennedy." Try and disregard that.)

Sadly, it closed yesterday, as Mary-Louise Wilson (Tony award winner for her featured performance as well) didn't want to continue on. Look for it when it pops up in the future (London '07-'08, I hear) and pray to the theatre gods that the lead has anywhere near the talent Christine Ebersole had.

Deuce

A play about two aging tennis idols who get together for the first time in thirty years at a tennis match where they are being honored for their contribution to the sport.

It's fantastic. Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes are remarkable actresses. They captivate the audience for an hour and forty minutes by merely talking to each other. Playwright Terrence McNally has won four Tony awards (two for plays [Master Class and Love! Valour! Compassion!] and two for books of a musical [Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime]) and this script is no misstep. While hardly any action occurs, the conversation between the leads twists and turns around multiple themes, never following one single message to pound home. The play meanders along like the memory recall of an elderly person: consistently insightful about loosely connected ideas.

The play runs through August 19th at the Music Box Theatre on 45th Street, New York, NY.