In 1928, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur penned a classic comedy about journalism titled The Front Page (both authors were ex-journalists). Based on this script, Charles Lederer wrote a screenplay that was filmed in 1939 by Howard Hawks under the title "His Girl Friday," in which ace reporter Hildy Johnson was changed from a man to the ex-wife of editor Walter Burns. American playwright John Guare was persuaded to conflate the two (though the original play needed no rewrite), and has done so with considerable, if not total, success. Guare has moved the site back to the original Criminal Courts Building in Chicago, and the time forward to the isolationist summer of 1939 (a photo of FDR is on the wall), when Burns could exclaim about a local story, "I don't care if Germany's about to invade Poland, this is a whole lot bigger."
Director Jack O'Brien and designer Bob Crowley decided to treat Guare's script as though it were a screenplay being filmed on a Hollywood sound stage. Cast members assemble the pressroom set, and to one side there are a director's chair and megaphone along with the traditional filmmaker's clapsticks. Everything, including all the costumes, are restricted to black, white and gray -- as though we are watching a pre-war black-and-white movie.
As the editor and reporter, Alex Jennings (with a Clark Gable moustache) and skirt-hitching Zoe Wanamaker make a wonderful couple, frantic and frenzied most of the time. Kerry Shale is amusing as the escaped prisoner who hides in the celebrated rolltop desk, and so are Sam Beazley and Harry Towb as the befuddled clergyman and the corrupt mayor. Margaret Tyzack is a hilarious battle-axe as Hildy's prospective mother-in-law, who, with furs flying, has it in for women writers ("I blame the entire decline of the west on Jane Austen"). O'Brien keeps things galloping fast and furiously.
