Weekend review roundup

Frost/Nixon
If I were squinting and had cataracts, I wouldn't mistake Frank Langella for Richard Nixon in a dark alley. Jimmy Stewart as Richard Nixon, maybe. But even in the view from a front row center orchestra seat under the bright lights emulating a television studio, Langella's performance as the disgraced former president is the most powerful, true representation of a historical figure I've seen on the stage in a long while. That's not to say Peter Morgan's play, now in previews at the Jacobs Theatre, is perfect. There's too much narration from secondary characters and too much background set-up on Nixon at the beginning. It's still a compelling treatment of all-too-familiar material, and Langella's ultimately pitiable Nixon is a sure contender come Tony time. Equally delicious is Michael Sheen's David Frost. Only Dudley Moore could make an English playboy more delightful.

Talk Radio
Like Langella, Liev Schreiber is catapulting a flawed play a bit closer to the territory of greatness. As the Barry Champlain, the call-in show host with a God complex in Eric Brogosian's "Talk Radio," Schreiber almost tops his impeccable Richard Roma in the recent "Glengarry Glen Ross" revival. Unfortunately, he doesn't have much in the way of a supporting cast here. While the voice actors handling the radio show calls are good, the play comes to a screeching halt anytime Schreiber leaves the stage. Still, Brogosian's play gets an additional boost from current events. There are, after all, other paths to self-destruction for a talk radio host that don't involve critiques of hairstyles. Like taking one's self too seriously. Thank goodness that so rarely happens on the AM dial today.

Forbidden Broadway
This isn't a review so much as a quick commentary: I haven't seen "Forbidden Broadway" since they days they were doing Bernadette Peters' Mama Rose, but seeing it today only magnifies the over-reliance on meta-humor and irony in the "real" Broadway. The best illustration? They are able to parody "The Song That Goes Like This" from "Spamalot" without changing a word until halfway through the song. As to the show itself: Even though it's harder to parody something that's already parodying itself, "Forbidden Broadway" still has more hits than misses. They really need to do another update, though. Shows like "Lennon" were such flashes in the pan that they're hardly worth the effort.