While we were in New York, we saw three plays: The Lion King (We did it for the kids, okay? And it is an amazing theatrical presentation, despite presenting one of the most abhorrent and unAmerican storylines imaginable), Frost/Nixon, and Talk Radio.
Frost/Nixon achieved one thing I thought would have been impossible: it made me wonder how the story was going to turn out. We have the story of how David Frost became the guy to score the big interview with post-Watergate Richard Nixon. Frost was evidently a lightweight show host, better known for his partying than his journalistic skills. And Nixon was, well, Nixon  bloody but unbowed after Watergate. Nixon wants to get back into politics, be the grand old man in Washington, and Frost wants to make a name for himself, rolling everything he’s got professionally and financially on setting this interview up. After much negotiation, the interviews finally start…and Frost gets hammered by Nixon, who’s an old pro at taking charge. What is Frost going to do?
Frank Langella is great as Nixon, and Michael Sheen is wonderful as Frost. The supporting cast is pretty good  the narrator is an associate of Frost who informs us of scene changes and where and when we are at any point. During the interviews, the actors are projected on TV monitors at the back of the stage, so Frost and Nixon get the job of doing stage acting and screen acting at the same time.
However, there’s something I really need to investigate: according to my playwriting teacher, Actors Equity rules say that every single actor on stage gets paid the same, no matter what  which is why these days you don’t have the casts of thousands you might have had in, say, a Noel Coward play. In Frost/Nixon, however, there are a ton of actors on the stage, and some of them have very few lines. One of them, Nixon’s dresser, had one line. And no one is in that theater to see anyone except Frank Langella. So the producers have got to be compensating Langella somehow, if not by salary, than by some other method.
Talk Radio is Eric Bogosian’s play about a foul-mouthed shock jock the night before he goes into national syndication. He manages to alienate his friends and his lover  will he manage to alienate all of us, too? Who is this guy, what drives him to do the things he does? Barry Champlain, the talk radio host, does a number of interviews with callers, who want to argue with him, or praise him, or what have you. We get monologues from his friend/sound engineer, from his producer/girlfriend, from the liaison to the corporate bosses, and finally from Champlain himself, after everyone has walked out on him due to his abusive behavior. Liev Schreiber was great as Champlain, who was infuriating and hateful, while simultaneously absolutely refusing to change who he was for anyone or anything.
Three interesting things about this show:
1) Both Darin and I were stunned by how mediocre the actors doing the sound engineer and the producer were during their monologues. I mean, this is New York: you can walk into any Dunkin’ Donuts and say, “I need 35 classically trained actors!” and walk out with a full cast plus backups. I have no idea how these two got their jobs. They weren’t awful. They just weren’t very good.
2) The actors weren’t miked, which seems to be fairly rare these days. The only time anyone was miked was when Champlain was on the air.
3) The show is set in 1987, and during his on-air stint Champlain rants about several 1987-era things, primarily Iran-Contra. During Champlain’s monologue, which ended the damn show, someone screams from the top balcony, “Talk about the Iraq War!” You could hear a pin drop in the theater. Then Schreiber gets started again and once again we hear, “Talk about the Iraq War!” followed by furious hissing and shouting. I believe Schreiber, mid-monologue, started to crack up, completely ruining the dramatic import of whatever the hell he was saying. In fact, pretty much all I can remember of the monologue is that some asshole who’d just spent $50 on a ticket to a play just ruined the end of the play for everyone in that theater.
The kids and I got off the plane at 10:30pm Sunday night  Darin had flown home the day before to rehearse for the Developer’s Conference up in San Francisco (you may have heard a little bit about the recent project he developed: Safari for Windows?).
Monday night Darin was still up in San Francisco and I headed out to Foothill College for the first night of auditions for the New Works Festival. We saw maybe twenty actors, doing “sides” (small excerpts) from everyone’s plays, for the directors and playwrights in the Festival. By the end of the evening, the playwrights totally hated their own plays and probably everyone else’s too. Hearing the same damn thing over and over again can make you crazy.
That said: it was fascinating to watch how some actors just leaped off the stage at you, grabbed you by the throat, and said, “I have presence!” You could tell when every director and playwright in the room was writing down exclamation marks next to an actor’s name. One actor was so good that, even though we’d seen one particular side about 48 times, she still managed to crack us up with it. That is beyond talent, it’s just lightning in a bottle. I have no idea why some people have it and some don’t.
I got home at 11. Darin got home some time after that, so he won on the “busy” spectrum.
Tuesday night we all trooped back to Foothill for the second night of auditions. Everyone had said that the second night would be much bigger in terms of number of actors, because actors are superstitious and believe that if they come the first night you’ll forget them. (One of the people sitting in the theater said, “Well, that’s pretty much true, actually.”) However, rumor did not turn out to be true, and we had fewer actors to see. Then afterward the playwrights and directors and festival management got together and hashed out casting lists for everyone’s play, and I think everyone was fairly pleased with how things shook out.
Wow, is casting not an easy process. For one thing, actors just have to spontaneously do their best, with no rehearsal, with no preparation. For another thing, what one person might like in an actor, another person might not like at all. (In fact, that happened to my carpool mate and me with one actor: she was thrilled with the audition, I was like, “Are you kidding?”) And then there were some actors who were very good but just completely wrong for the roles available. And then there were the actors we all know but had nothing for  that was the toughest. What do you say next time you see them? “You were great, you just weren’t right for the play.” It’s true…but it hurts.
Despite seeing many fewer actors and casting the plays relatively quickly, I still got home at 10:30. Everyone was asleep.
Wednesday night was Playwriting class, and in addition to some very funny stuff by one writer (including a deeply funny and vicious sendup of the audition night process), we did 41 pages of my current play in progress. And I got glowing reviews from my classmates, and since I know how critical they can be, I was walking on air afterward. (I tried walking on water: failed miserably.) I told everyone I’d written all of the pages they hadn’t seen before pretty much on the flight from San Francisco to New York (when I was flying first class), and the teacher suggested they take up a collection to send me on a flight from San Francisco to Australia so I could finish it.
I got home at 10:30 and wasn’t walking particularly steadily. I avoided falling asleep during the car ride and felt this was a great victory.
Thursday I collapsed and napped at home while the kids played World of Warcraft and watched whatever TV shows they wanted. I don’t want to fall asleep when I’m home with the kids, but I couldn’t stop myself. And they hadn’t watched much TV or played World of Warcraft in weeks, so I didn’t feel too guilty.
Just during the auditions I felt like I learned a ton about how to put on a show. I am so thrilled to be involved with the New Works Festival  Foothill is a great training ground for actors, writers, and directors. I’ve gotten much more hands on experience with the process of actually making a script into reality there than I ever did at USC. How amazing is that?
Next week: the kids are in camp and I’m just going to sleep.
That’s actually not true about the Broadway performers all receiving the same amount, there is a minimum that they cannot go below, but they can get much more. In some shows, particularly by non-profit companies, everyone might get paid the minimum, but that’s not Equity’s rule.
Well, thank goodness — I was hoping it was something like that. I had a lot of trouble believing Lane and Broderick were getting the same as Chorus Girl #3.