TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s launches into the new year Jan. 16 with Peter Morgan’s timely drama, “Frost/Nixon,” which director Leslie Martinson says is an allegory for the current political climate.
“Frost/Nixon” debuted in London in 2006 and was followed quickly by the 2008 feature film adaptation. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards and five Golden Globes.
The story centers on the famous 1977 series of TV interviews between Richard Nixon and British talk show host David Frost, who Martinson likens to the Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Fallon of the time. An unexpected pairing for the former president’s first in-depth interview following his resignation, the odd couple’s tense conversation cemented Nixon’s legacy in the public eye.
Martinson, TheatreWorks’ former associate artistic director, has been with the company for more than three decades. Her directing credits extend back to 1987 and include the recent premiere of “The Four Immigrants: An American Musical Manga,” which featured an entirely Asian cast and earned her the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award.
She says this show requires an understanding of history as well as of stage technique and human emotion. She stands in front of a shelf of books written by or about the play’s characters, who are all based on real people. Each actor was given a book about their character so they could “fill in what the playwright had sketched,” the director adds.
The production will also feature footage from the interviews, which scenic designer David Cuthbert has integrated into the live action.
Martinson said she’s glad the company is producing this play in 2019, when issues of how celebrity and politics overlap become “more crucial every day.”
“Nixon’s career can literally be tracked through his TV appearances, which was a new phenomenon,” Martinson said. “He had the first and only televised resignation. That’s a current issue we’ve not resolved: what politics and celebrity mean and how they affect each other.”
She also notes a resurgence of public interest in the former president’s final days in office. Cable news, she says, mentions Nixon’s name almost daily when reporting about the current White House administration. Even Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who famously broke the Watergate scandal, are being interviewed on MSNBC.
“This play lives in this moment,” Martinson said. “It’s right now. The same people and the same issues are still right in front of us.”
One of the main issues the play grapples with is accountability, which Martinson says is a distinctly Bay Area topic. Local audiences are familiar with public apologies, from the Enron scandal to Odwalla’s contamination scare, and how scripts can be flipped.
“People make mistakes; people make bad decisions; people do evil things, and that’s not the end of their story,” Martinson said. “They still have choices after that. In the Bay Area, with its history of activism and groundbreaking and boycotts and strikes, we’re interested in how you fix things.”
Because of this resonance, Martinson says she’s been looking forward to producing this play for some time.
“Sometimes in rehearsal you can hear a pin drop, and other times we’re laughing so hard we have to stop,” Martinson said. “It’s going to be very entertaining, which I know is odd to say about Richard Nixon, and unexpectedly moving as you watch these men grapple with issues of fame and apology.”
The supporting cast comes primarily from the Bay Area, while the two leads—Jeremy Webb as David Frost and Allen McCullough as Richard Nixon—were brought in from New York to perform with TheatreWorks for the first time. Webb’s theatre credits span the country, and he has been featured on NBC’s “Law & Order” and CBS’s “Guiding Light.” McCullough has appeared in HBO’s “Vinyl” and Amazon Prime’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
While casting and design preparations began several months ago, rehearsals did not begin until Dec. 21. The cast and crew had just under three weeks in a rehearsal hall—a makeshift stage with stand-in props, including TV cameras made of cardboard boxes and music stands with the presidential seal hanging down. Then they had a week and a half to rehearse on the stage with real cameras and props before opening.
“Frost/Nixon” runs Jan. 16-Feb. 10 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St. Tickets are $40-$100 at theatreworks.org or 650-463-1960.
