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Keach's Nixon Unimpeachable

By PENNY CARNATHAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 19, 2009

There's little to distract in the stage version of "Frost/Nixon." The set is stark. The props few. The action nonexistent.

So the performances better be powerful.

And Stacy Keach is good, very good, as the ill-tempered former president with a penchant for deadpan one-liners. Keach got Richard Nixon's bulldog posture, his carved scowl, his abrupt mood swings. And he got laughs Tuesday night.

He and Alan Cox portray caricatures of Nixon and David Frost, the ebullient playboy talk-show host who pinned everything on a few hours of interviews with the disgraced one-time Leader of the Free World. The 1977 interviews, and the behind-the-scenes dance of featherweight versus heavyweight, form the basis of this Tony Award-winning play.

Frost, a sort of carefree leprechaun, longs to be taken seriously as a journalist. To do that, he aims to get Nixon. The Watergate scandal that began five years earlier is still a tender wound in the American psyche, and the man most Americans blame for their pain - Nixon - has never admitted to or apologized for his role in it. Winning an admission or apology would make Frost rich and famous.

"Four hundred million people watched his resignation," he says, salivating at the prospect of grabbing those viewers.

Nixon's agent, meanwhile, garners his client some big bucks for what he promises will be a no-sweat chat.

"It's gonna be a big wet kiss. A valentine," Irving "Swifty" Lazar assures Nixon.

In the buildup to the interviews, members of the Frost and Nixon camps serve as narrators, explaining the unfolding drama from their own perspectives. This makes for some awkward moments as cast members stand motionless onstage, waiting out monologues.

The flow resumes whenever Frost and Nixon come to life. Their polar-opposite characters begin to fit together, Nixon's jagged edges sliding into Frost's soft spots like two pieces of a puzzle that snap into place - to a burst of spontaneous applause - when Nixon drunk-dials his interviewer.

You and I, we're alike, he tells Frost. No matter what we achieve, the snobs still look down on us. And we're both looking for something we lost, a way back into the sun.

Whoever loses this, he says, goes back to the wilderness.

The movie version of "Frost/Nixon" left town before I got a chance to see it. I'm glad. The star, Frank Langella, honed his Nixon in the original Broadway production, and he's up for an Oscar for his film portrayal.

Keach's Nixon made the play for me. I wouldn't want him to have to apologize.