“Frost/Nixon”

Peter Morgan

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley

A sweaty upper lip that many believe helped sink his first presidential bid.  A resignation announced in his West Wing office in order to avoid sure impeachment.  Raised, waving arms with fingers of both hands in a “V” – in the past given in both victory and as an act of defiance and one last time, given as a defeated farewell.  A long-overdue, surprise confession to a foreign, late-night TV host. 

Perhaps no president’s legacy has been more emblazoned through the lens of a television camera into the collective memory of a nation than that of Richard Milhous Nixon.  In his 2006 play and 2008 movie, Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan (with a generous dose of literary license) creates with cameras rolling an incredulous string of events that leads in the play’s version of history to Richard Nixon’s admitting in almost a whisper to British TV star David Frost, “I was involved in a cover-up.”  TheatreWorks Silicon Valley now stages its own Frost/Nixonin a version where many in the audience probably have at least seen the Oscar nominated movie if not the play, where most if not all know the play’s outcome, and where everyone will still find themselves breathless and on the edge of their seats as the tension in the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts meteorically rises just as those same words are finally said.

For my full review, please proceed to Talkin’ Broadway: https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/sanjose/sj148.html.

Rating: 4 E

Frost/Nixon continues through February 10, 2019 at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro Street, Mountain View.  Tickets are available online at http://www.theatreworks.org/  or by calling 650-463-1960, Monday – Friday 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Saturday – Sunday, Noon – 6 p.m.

Photo Credit: Kevin Berne