REVIEWS ...
Wednesday, June 12, 2002
Psst! Let's eavesdrop on 'Nixon'
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
cdolen@herald.com
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger really did have a private White House meeting on Aug. 7, 1974, the night before Nixon abandoned a presidency undone by the Watergate break-in.
No one -- except Kissinger, who has said little, and Nixon, now deceased -- knows exactly what the men said that night. But playwright Russell Lees came up with his best guess, a fanciful, sometimes hilarious, acid-tinged play called Nixon's Nixon.
Newly opened at GableStage under Joseph Adler's direction, Nixon's Nixon weds historical fact to fantasy as Nixon contemplates the past, even as he's picking Kissinger's brilliant brain for ideas on how to avoid the inevitable.
Lees delivers a funny, at times vicious theatrical two-hander, and Adler's cast -- Peter Haig as Nixon, John Felix as Kissinger -- zestfully tears into it.
Set in the handsomely appointed Lincoln Sitting Room against the backdrop of an enormous American flag (the terrific set is by Rich Simone), Nixon's Nixon finds the commander-in-chief musing about his place in history as his secretary of state alternately appeases and goads him. Both men down more than a few vodkas, and as their 90 minutes together progress, the liquor loosens their tongues -- not that Haig's Nixon is ever lacking in frankness.
Nixon insists that Kissinger role-play with him, serving up a kind of greatest-hits revue of their historical triumphs. Watching Felix playing Kissinger playing Chairman Mao -- and speaking only in Chinese -- is very funny.
Watergate and secret presidential tapes come up, of course, and Kissinger briefly helps Nixon scheme about potential attention-deflecting international crises after Nixon suggests that certain tapes wouldn't exactly do Kissinger any good, were they to come to light.
While trying to impress upon Nixon that resignation is his only possibility, Kissinger also tries to flatter the boss into persuading Gerald Ford not to install Gen. Alexander Haig as secretary of state. It's the only way, Kissinger suggests more than once, that Nixon's political agenda can continue to be played out.
Astutely, Nixon dubs Kissinger "my Machiavelli with the belly."
Adopting some Nixonian intonations and facial expressions, Haig convincingly plays a man so accustomed to being a human version of Teflon -- everything bad just slid off -- that he can't imagine anything other than the notion that this, too, shall pass. Gleefully, he envisions himself as the underdog who always rises, the hero who appeals "to the Richard Nixon in everybody."
He really doesn't know himself at all.
Scrunching his head down into his torso so that his neck appears to vanish, Felix speaks in a low German-accented rumble, offering a Kissinger who bounces back and forth from toady to egomaniac. He's a strong foil for Haig's more manic Nixon.
Eavesdropping is seldom this much fun. Or this unsettling.
Christine Dolen is The Herald's theater critic.
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
Political odd couple in a tango of power ploys
By Bill Hirschman, Staff Writer
It is the dark night of Richard Nixon's soul before he announces his resignation, and he is spewing a mind-boggling corkscrew of self-delusions and rationalizations to a captive audience of one: Henry Kissinger.
As portraits of Lincoln glare down in silent rebuke, Nixon pouts that more Americans died in the Civil War than Vietnam, "and he went on Mount Rushmore."
Such chillingly funny moments encapsulate Nixon's Nixon, a darkly comic meditation on politicians' ethics-warping addiction to power for their personal validation.
This overlong indulgence of everyone-but-mea-culpas remains hilarious and thought provoking, a testament to the exemplary acting and directing at the GableStage.
Russell Lees has penned a trenchant political cartoon of topical satire and relationship comedy. The Aug. 7, 1974, meeting occurred, but no one except Bob Woodward claims to know what really happened. And Lees doesn't care.
This is a fantasia that only uses the characters and the situation as a jumping off point for "what ifs."
Nixon (Peter Haig) claims he wants Kissinger's reassurance about the judgment of history. But in reality, Nixon is still wriggling in the jaws of the trap, hoping Kissinger can help find an out that isn't there.
Master manipulator Kissinger (John Felix) simply wants to ensure the unraveling Nixon presses Ford to keep him as the Machiavelli behind the throne.
Throughout there are metaphorical resonances of a co-dependent marriage. At one of the few moments when the cartoon edges into pathos, Nixon begs an offended Kissinger, "Don't leave me, please."
Rich Simone's sumptuous Lincoln Room set is appropriately fraying, with plaster and laths showing at the edges.
But the real attraction is watching Lees, Haig, Felix and director Adler guide us through the political meltdown.
Haig's haunted hooded eyes dart around, vainly seeking a bolster for the frail envelope of his rationalizations. Far from phlegmatic, this is a kinetic Nixon nearly bouncing off the walls. Felix's stolid Kissinger is a gravel-voiced bullfrog whose perpetually downturned mouth twists into grimaces of disgust and fear.
Following the playwright's advice, neither impersonates their role models, but they provide more than enough physical and vocal similarities to keep the differences from encroaching on your suspension of disbelief.
Lees is to blame for the one crippling failing. Despite flawless pacing from Adler and company, the script slams the same points over and over in an intermissionless 90 minutes that seem much, much longer.
But that is forgotten at the climax as the two monsters plot the one ploy that could save the president's career, manufacturing an international catastrophe that Nixon could defuse after hundreds of thousands of civilians have lost their lives.
It provides a frightening resonance to current events as Nixon says, "They gave me so much power. Why are they surprised I used it?"
Bill Hirschman can be reached at 954-356-4513 or bhirschman@sun-sentinel.com.
