Frost/Nixon

I was so enthralled by the play Frost/Nixon by Peter Morgan, now on Broadway, and by the performances of Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, that I could barely take notes. The fourteen-performer play sets up and conducts the famous television interviews by David Frost of the deposed Richard Nixon and really does seem to get inside the head of Nixon, played brilliantly by Langella, in one of the great stage performances I have ever seen (including Langella himself in Dracula, John Malkovich in Burn This, Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens, and Paul Robeson in Othello). The final crumbling of "Tricky Dickie" is a never-to-be-forgotten experience, and Langella's face is vividly, permanently, etched in my mind. Michael Grandage has directed with taste, timing, and microscopic focus that pulls us in and then further in.

Christopher Oram's spare design, including the huge segmented TV screens upstage with Jon Driscoll's video design, and Neil Austin's lighting, all help mold this fascinating play, with ripples of contemporary political relevance, into a spell-binding production that excites the mind and our artistic receptivity with its wit and depth.