Susan Granger’s review of “Farnsworth” (Music Box Theater, ’07-’08 season)
Playwright Aaron Sorkin (“A Few Good Men” and TV’s “The West Wing” and “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”) imagines the David vs. Goliath-like struggle Philo T. Farnsworth went through to build the first television system on his family’s potato farm back in the 1930s and then, in subsequent years, to try to protect his wondrous invention from being usurped by RCA’s ruthlessly aggressive David Sarnoff, a Russian immigrant who became a broadcasting visionary.
There’s no doubt that young, self-educated Philo T. Farnsworth (Jimmi Simpson) was an engineering genius from Idaho, admits David Sarnoff (Hank Azaria), but he also had a drinking problem. And Sarnoff was the first person to truly understand the possibilities and implications of the embryonic TV medium, acknowledges Farnsworth.
In real life, the two adversaries never came face-to-face but on-stage, they engage in a gripping, imaginary, razor-sharp verbal joust, relating conflicting versions of who said and did what, when and why. About one fact, however, there is no quibbling: Farnsworth called his TV-camera tube an “image dissector,” which RCA’s technicians later improved into an “image orthicon,” eventually shortened to “immy” – and that’s how the Emmys, TV’s highest honor, got their name.
Director Des McAnuff (Tony-winner for “The Jersey Boys”) nimbly paces the complicated aural and visual, almost cinematic concept with its 19-member cast playing 150 different roles, on Klara Zieglerova’s two-tiered set, aided by choreographer Lisa Shriver. Jimmi Simpson radiates engaging warmth, immediately capturing the audience’s sympathy, and Hank Azaria counters with seductive charm.
While Aaron Sorkin’s rousing tale makes tantalizing theater, for the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say, read Paul Schatzkin’s biography, “The Boy Who Invented Television.” As opposed to Sorkin’s fabricated version, it was Farnsworth who prevailed in court, and RCA was compelled to pay him $1 million to license his patents.