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Give Them a Sword

Sir David meets King Richard in the Interview of the Century.

May 21, 2007, Vol. 12, No. 34 • By ROBERT ZELNICK
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With Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan confirms his place as the multi-media master of a strange but engaging genre of fiction. The writer behind such award-season heavyweights as The Queen and The Last King of Scotland--both of which garnered dual Oscar and Golden Globe wins for their respective leading actors--Morgan now tries his hand at a piece of Americana: the Richard Nixon-David Frost interviews of 1977. The play, which opened on Broadway late last month, is a compelling bit of theater. As a work of historical fiction, however, it shows too little allegiance to the facts that inspired it.

Morgan approaches the sessions as a kind of boxing match between two unequal opponents. In one corner, the disgraced though heavily favored former president, buttressed by his chief of staff Col. Jack Brennan and his agent "Swifty" Lazar. In the other corner, British talk-show host David Frost, depicted here as something of a dandy, and his team of researchers. Morgan uses Frost researcher James Reston (Stephen Kunken) and Brennan (Corey Johnson) as narrators, setting the scenes and underlining with commentary the points he wishes to make.

Frost's character is played by Michael Sheen, who has twice done Tony Blair in highly praised interpretations of Morgan's work. Here the collaboration has Frost anguishing over his cancelled American and Australian weekly gigs, and the resulting snub by Sardi's--long a hangout of Broadway celebrities--depriving him of his favorite table. Morgan's Frost is a cheeky playboy, all style and no substance, whose interest in the interviews stems more from ego than intellect.

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