Susan Granger’s review of “Frost/Nixon” (2006-2007 season)
Playwright Peter Morgan has had an incredible year. He wrote acclaimed TV drama “Queen Elizabeth I,” was Oscar-nominated for “The Queen,” co-wrote “The Last King of Scotland,” now this fascinating fictional docudrama about media and power, set in 1977.
Staged like a verbal sparring match, in one corner, there’s ambitious British talk show host David Frost (Martin Sheen), who paid $600,000, outbidding Mike Wallace and CBS for a series of “no holds barred’ interviews. In the other, disgraced former American President Richard Milhouse Nixon, forced to resign to avoid empeachment over Watergate and pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. Until this time, Nixon had never admitted blame or apologized to the American people for abusing executive privilege.
Director Michael Grandage mounts this seminal series of gripping encounters with style and panache, utilizing a fragmented bank of 36 small, vintage TV monitors which hang over the set like a third eye, enhancing the credibility.
Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair opposite Helen Mirren in “The Queen,” quintessentially captures the effervescence, hesitancy and determination of David Frost, while Frank Langella (“Good Night and Good Luck,” “Superman Returns”) nails the persona of Richard Nixon, a man looking to rebuild some of his former reputation. His affable performance is a perfect piece of work, mature and composed: stainless steel with just a hairline crack in it. Their potent confrontation emerges as ferociously exciting.
The stalwart supporting cast imported from the London Donmar Warehouse includes Stephen Kunken, as political author/researcher Jim Reston, and Corey Johnson, as Nixon’s chief-of-staff Jack Brennan. Stephen Rowe is impressive as both uber-agent “Swifty” Lazar and television interrogator Mike Wallace.
It should come as no surprise that Ron Howard is looking to make this into a film.