TALK RADIO Reviews

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 8:28pm

Murray is mixed:
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/TalkRadio2007.html

"As directed by Robert Falls, this production doesn't cut much deeper - you're still forced into making a leap of faith in believing that what Barry says and thinks matters, even when it doesn't. Despite those monologues, the ancillary characters get so little play that it's hard to take them seriously, let alone keep them straight at times. Hermann has a few moments of gleaming-eye deviousness that suggest a more interesting history between him and Barry than Bogosian scripted, but they're fleeting. Plot developments occurring as Barry pushes everyone farther and farther away are as generally incidental as they are ineffectual; the one-two-punch climax, in which a distraught Linda calls into the show to salvage the relationship and Barry invites a colorful caller (Sebastian Stan) into the studio, is exceptionally underwhelming.

Schreiber, however, is not. He's in every way a natural as Barry, as capable of unleashing soothingly sonorous tones for his on-air voice as threatening to vanish into the aural background when the mics go off. Whereas in his other recent stage appearances, including Macbeth in Central Park last summer and his Tony-winning turn in Glengarry Glen Ross in 2005, he's borne the broad-shouldered carriage of a man in charge, there are times here he looks like a lost high-school senior searching for meaning in a world where it's not easily found."

[Bobby Maler]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 9:31pm

Hey, where's Margo?

Variety is mixed. A rave for Schreiber, but thinks the play is dramaturgically "less than rock solid." Think the play is culturally insightful, but it is problematic that none of the other actors can match Schrieber.

"Enter angry, might be the stage direction that introduces the riveting Liev Schreiber as Cleveland shock jock Barry Champlain in "Talk Radio." "Kill 'em all," he snarls, wishing for a gun to mow down bad drivers. Many performances would have no place to go but down from that kind of boiling rage. But Schreiber proceeds, over the course of a 105-minute single act, to fuel the character's dyspeptic ferocity with bourbon, coffee, cigarettes, Pepto-Bismol and scalding contempt, ratcheting it up by agonizing degrees until the armor of his godlike superiority cracks to reveal the self-doubt and disgust beneath. Or is all that just part of Barry's performance too?
Originally conceived by Eric Bogosian as a solo performance piece in 1985, then developed into a multi-character play that premiered at the Public Theater two years later, "Talk Radio" evolved further in the 1988 Oliver Stone movie, incorporating elements of the story of Denver radio personality Alan Berg, who was murdered by the Aryan Nation in 1984.

All three of the drama's incarnations were born out of an era when radio phone-in shows provided a more concentrated channel for the kind of hard-line opinion that now ricochets freely around the blogosphere.

But the blistering views aired in the play are no less relevant 20 years later. The moral and cultural void against which Barry -- and by extension, Bogosian -- rails is perhaps an even greater factor in the current voyeuristic climate, in which Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears trump concerns of war, politics and eco-angst. The bleak cynicism behind the play now seems prescient in its observation of a media in which news has been co-opted by entertainment and personal crises are fodder for public consumption"

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 9:41pm

AM NY is Positive:

"Robert Falls' production, his first in New York since the tepid "Frank's Home" at Playwrights Horizons, is sharp and lively.

Combining Bogosian's provocative script with a convincing performance by Schreiber, "Talk Radio" makes for undeniably enjoyable theater."
http://www.amny.com/entertainment/am-talk0312,0,6839871.story?coll=am-ent-headlines

[Bobby Maler]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 9:42pm

New York Daily News is mixed.

Time has taken a toll on the play, particularly its phone conversations, which seem less edgy and more predictable than they did when "Talk Radio" first was presented off-Broadway two decades ago.

"Fortunately, in this revival, which opened Sunday at Broadway's Longacre Theatre, Barry is portrayed by Liev Schreiber, an intense, idiosyncratic actor who is fun to watch...
By the end of his time on the air, Barry is spent, physically and morally exhausted. The audience is just as tired. Ranting can be hard if not particularly satisfying work. So is listening to it."

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 9:46pm

The AP is Mixed:

"Time has taken a toll on the play, particularly its phone conversations, which seem less edgy and more predictable than they did when "Talk Radio" first was presented off-Broadway two decades ago.

Fortunately, in this revival, which opened Sunday at Broadway's Longacre Theatre, Barry is portrayed by Liev Schreiber, an intense, idiosyncratic actor who is fun to watch. "Talk Radio" could almost be a one-man show, the way the accomplished Schreiber commands the action, wich is still firmly set in the late 1980s.

________________________________________________________________

By the end of his time on the air, Barry is spent, physically and morally exhausted. The audience is just as tired. Ranting can be hard if not particularly satisfying work. So is listening to it."


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/artandlife/1404AP_Theater_Talk_Radio.html

[gustof777]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 9:49pm

the annoying folk at broadway.com weren't crazy about it.

http://www.broadway.com/gen/general.aspx?ci=545012

god I hate that Randi woman!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 9:51pm

Newsday is Mixed-to-Negative:

""Talk Radio" -- an Off-Broadway hit in 1987 and an Oliver Stone movie in 1988 -- was never more than a one-note performance piece with human background. And though everyone in Robert Falls' production plays that note clearly, it still is. But Schreiber plays it with the magnificent conviction of someone who believes, at least for now, that it's the only one on the keyboard.

It would be naive and a mistake to assume that Barry Champlain was a new phenomenon when Bogosian introduced him in the '80s. The character, inspired by the likes of Howard Stern and lesser disembodied loudmouths of the airwaves, had long been dragging down what we innocently believed then to be the lowest common denominator with a call-in cocktail of irreverence, false piety and a political grandiosity.

Faced now with a culture of reality-phonies and fake celebrity, in fact, we can almost view Barry as an artifact discovered in an archeological dumb-down dig.

For about half of "Talk Radio," we are captivated by the tight, deftly presented handful of radio staffers, the true-believers and the cynic-in-a-suit who enable Barry's obsessive existence.

Eventually, alas, the nutjobs and psychos who reach out in the night for Barry get more and redundant. And, because this is meant to have more plot than a piece of earlier Bogosian performance art, events begin to happen that strain credulity. "

________________________________________________________________

Falls, the artistic director of Chicago's Goodman Theatre, approaches the script with all the care and attention he has brought to Broadway productions of such classics as "Death of a Salesman" and "Long Day's Journey into Night." But even his firm hand cannot make the play add up to more than it is......... With a mesmerizing performance by Schreiber, we believe Barry can lean further into the nightmare of himself.


http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/stage/ny-ettalkradio0312,0,667165.story?coll=ny-theater-headlines

Updated On: 3/11/07 at 09:51 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 10:44pm

NY Times is a rave for Schreiber:

"In the course of “Talk Radio,” set during one eventful night broadcast in a Cleveland studio, Barry will be forced to confront another, less august image of himself, offered up by the sort of lonely, angry people who regularly phone in. What Barry glimpses allows Mr. Schreiber to provide the most lacerating portrait of a human meltdown this side of a Francis Bacon painting.

Directed by Robert Falls, who provides a solid frame for his incandescent leading man, this revival may not make a case for Mr. Bogosian’s 1987 drama as a play for the ages. The rotting United States decried by Barry looks almost wholesome 20 years later. But like the original production, which starred Mr. Bogosian as Barry, it allows its star to grab an audience by the lapels and shake it into submission. Anyone familiar with Mr. Schreiber’s stage work — whether in Shakespeare, Pinter or Mamet — will regard this opportunity as a privilege.

With “Talk Radio” Mr. Schreiber, who won a Tony two years ago for his performance in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” confirms his status as the finest American theater actor of his generation, a man capable of presenting clouded, complicated minds with searing clarity. His performance here is unnervingly physical as Barry’s malaise of the soul translates into all manner of bodily discomforts.

Yet the insight and technique that shape this downward slide are never slipshod. You are always subliminally aware that Barry’s losing control is mapped by someone who will never lose control as an artist. A good but less dazzling screen actor, Mr. Schreiber offers a balance between intelligence and instinct, both invigorating and reassuring, that is made for the theater. You know you’re in the hands of the ultimate professional."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/theater/reviews/12talk.html?8dpc

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 11:25pm

Brantley hasn't written such an praise filled love letter to a performer since he reviewed JERSEY BOYS.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 11:36pm

...GREY GARDENS.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/11/07 at 11:36pm

...THE APPLE TREE...

[FosterChild]

Posted: 3/12/07 at 12:04am

I thought the Broadway.com people loved everything. Did I miss something?

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 3/12/07 at 12:07am

They love crowd pleasers. I believe they hated TRANSLATIONS and were lukewarm about GREY GARDENS and UTOPIA.

[FosterChild]

Posted: 3/12/07 at 12:15am

They loved "Journey's End." Is that a crowdpleaser? I haven't seen it yet.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 3/12/07 at 12:47am

Almost every paragraph of Brantley's review starts with Liev's name in some sort.
I guess he likes big Hairy Men.
But he does make me want to see this and Liev is certainly the ultimate stage actor of his generation.
He's in his thirties so that's exactly what generation?

[FosterChild]

Posted: 3/12/07 at 12:55am

He's 40. If you take people 5 years older and 5 years younger than him, I guess his generation would include other Brantley favorites like Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth and Raul Esparza?
Updated On: 3/12/07 at 12:55 AM

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 3/12/07 at 1:05am

well I just thought of Brian F. O'Byrne whi fits the mold and is less hairy, which i like.
How lucky to have such amazing actors in New York theatre right now.

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 3/12/07 at 6:30am

That Phyllis from Word of Mouth is like a sheepdog. She can't get that damn hair out of her face.