The first thing the audience sees in the stage production of Frost/Nixon is a gigantic screen, crackling with static. Peter Morgan’s play (the basis for the Oscar-nominated film) is nominally about the famous 1977 TV interviews between British talk-show personality David Frost and former president Richard Nixon, and the negotiations that led up to them. But it’s also about the seductiveness of power, and how television can both grant and undermine that power. So it’s nice to report that while the screen dominates the set of Frost/Nixon, it doesn’t steal our attention. During the interview segments the actors are shown simultaneously in closeup, Jumbotron-style. But even though those huge faces are compelling, the stage is where the action is, thanks to the precise direction of Michael Grandage and the enthralling interplay between Stacy Keach and Alan Cox as Nixon and Frost.
This article appears in Feb 18-24, 2009.