Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #452993 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-17
• Released on: 2007-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780571235414
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Customer Reviews

Frosty and Tricky
I've yet to see Peter Morgan's "The Queen," but based on his new play "Frost/Nixon" it's clear that Morgan is a very skillful dramatist. "F/N" is fluid, intriguing, and a quick read. The "battle" between the two main characters is what the media hype has been focused on, but just as interesting is the build up: Frost (aptly named) is the master of cool; Nixon, we know, sweats and stammers but does his best to remain presidential.

The play is narrated by two characters, one a Frost adviser, one a Nixon chief of staff. The plot, therefore, zings along, much like a political thriller, as we wait for the main event: the infamous TV interviews. Each man has something at stake; each is hard-nosed and egotistical.

"F/N" has a screenplay quality to it. Some will accuse it of being more like film than like theatre. But, in the end, it entertains and makes you think about stardom, dishonor, and the cult of personality that TV has wrought. In "F/N", we see the birth of infotainment, before it had a name.

Not a play
Disclaimer: I must admit that I have not read the book. I only saw a stage performance with Stacy Keach as Nixon. I did not like it. If the play as intended by the writer is different, I apologize.

The stage version that I saw is in first place not a suitable adaptation of a story for the stage. The story of the interviews run by an outsider and the self-demaskation by the old man might have been suitable material. In order to make a good play, the interview situation and its specific dramatic development ought to be the focus of the play.
It is not. Rather we get something like a vaudeville show with lame comedic elements (how can I take an author and an audience seriously when they laugh at the following: Frost meets a woman on a plane, starts flirting, and tells her she must visit Vienna, it is like Paris without French; that is about the standard of the humor of this 'play')about a process that never develops life or interest. There is no 'chemistry' at all between the clown of an interviewer and the other clown of a former politician. I was willing to give Keach all kinds of benefit of doubt, but his Nixon is not a man that I could take any interest in.

For this to have been a good play, first of all, the role of the explainer needs to be kicked out. Somebody, presumably the author as a participant in the interview arrangements, keeps explaining to us what we see on the stage. That can be an effective stage device, say in a Brecht kind of play, but not here, where psycholical tension would be needed. The explainer effectively kills all interest.

Not sure if I still want to watch the movie. Maybe just to find out if it is possible to blow a semblance of life into this dead duck?

P.S. I watched the movie in the meantime, and while it did not bowl me over with enthusiasm, I saw that the material is clearly much better suited for the screen than the stage. It is really, as I say in my headline, not a 'play'.