Seeking the Nixon Behind the Caricature (Play/Broadway)
IN a quiet corner of the bar at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in New York, Frank Langella raised his hands in victory signs, furrowed his brow and shook his jowls violently: the International Symbol for Richard Nixon.
Mr. Langella, one of the most celebrated stage actors of his generation, has tackled both Dracula and Sherlock Holmes; he knows what it means to step into a role that is already cemented in myth. But there may be no caricature as permanently etched in the American imagination as the one he’s playing now.
“Nixon was a great monster for good and bad, a delicious person to caricature,” he said. “The first week of rehearsals all of the actors were doing him, and I finally had to say, ‘You have to stop.’ ”
“Frost/Nixon,” which opens on Broadway Sunday night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, is a play about the series of television interviews David Frost conducted in 1977 with Richard M. Nixon, who had resigned from the presidency three years earlier. Mr. Frost paid Nixon $600,000 for the chance to prove he could play hardball and nearly blew it when Nixon swatted away his questions with anecdotes and generalities.
Read entire article at NYT
Mr. Langella, one of the most celebrated stage actors of his generation, has tackled both Dracula and Sherlock Holmes; he knows what it means to step into a role that is already cemented in myth. But there may be no caricature as permanently etched in the American imagination as the one he’s playing now.
“Nixon was a great monster for good and bad, a delicious person to caricature,” he said. “The first week of rehearsals all of the actors were doing him, and I finally had to say, ‘You have to stop.’ ”
“Frost/Nixon,” which opens on Broadway Sunday night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, is a play about the series of television interviews David Frost conducted in 1977 with Richard M. Nixon, who had resigned from the presidency three years earlier. Mr. Frost paid Nixon $600,000 for the chance to prove he could play hardball and nearly blew it when Nixon swatted away his questions with anecdotes and generalities.