I have no idea how athletic or agile Vincent Canby, drama critic for the New York Times, is. But seven months ago he was doing somersaults and cartwheels over Utah playwright Russell Lees' big off-Broadway hit, "Nixon's Nixon."
One quote from his ecstatic review: " `Nixon's Nixon' deserves all of the good things you have heard about it and more. It's both a serious work of the imagination and a fully realized political satire of the sort that the American theater seldom sees."It may also be the perfect antidote to Oliver Stone's fancy and flatulent three-hour-plus movie, `Nixon,' an upscale docudrama that pretends to deal in facts, a number of which may not be true.
" `Nixon's Nixon' makes no such mistake. It's like a jazz riff on contemporary history. It's one playwright's speculation about what went on at a meeting that was closed to all except the two parties involved. There were no flies on the wall of the White House that night."
Next week, "Nixon's Nixon" will have its first regional mounting - giving Lees' work a chance to be seen by his own, hometown crowd.
Like its central character, this particular production has stirred up quite a bit of talk - at least in the local theater community. Because of Lees' long association with TheatreWorks West (which mounted such previous Lees works as "Monday Night Football" and the collaborative "The Foggiest Notion"), it was assumed . . . wrongly, of course . . . that TWW would automatically produce "Nixon's Nixon."
But, especially in show biz, things rarely work out that simply.
The details about how "Nixon's Nixon" came to be produced by Salt Lake Acting Company . . . and directed by Fran Pruyn, TheatreWorks West's artistic director . . . are probably too complicated to explain in one story. Besides that, they're probably downright boring for anyone outside local theater circles.
Playwright Lees, interviewed from his home in Los Angeles (where he is currently involved in a computer project), said he first got the idea for the script when he and a director friend were in Boston.
"I wanted to write a play about American history. The two of us would get together and kind of theorize that it couldn't be done. We couldn't think of any successful examples," Lees said.
"I knew that contemporary British playwrights were writing about British history and stuff and I wanted to write a play about Lyndon B. Johnson, but I couldn't think of one that didn't have a cast of thousands," he said. "So I had kind of given up on the idea when my friend was reading a biography of Kissinger that had recently come out and said `Well, you know, that the night before Nixon resigned was awfully dramatic.'
"So I read the same biography and then I started reading biographies of Nixon and read `The Final Days' and by that point I had read so many long books I felt like I had to write something!"
So Lees started writing the play and continued doing some research while he was writing.
"This was very enjoyable, having grown up in the Nixon years. I was in high school when he resigned so I was aware of most of the events," said Lees. "I hadn't been that political in high school, so I didn't really know how everything fit together, so it was nice to be able to go do the research and go, `Oh, yeah, now I understand the point to that.' '
- SALT LAKE ACTING CO. executive producers Nancy Borgenicht and Allen Nevins, in a joint interview last week, noted that it took nearly a month to cast "Nixon's Nixon."
"There's a certain expectancy that's hard to come up with," said Nevins. "But we found two mature actors who know their way around the stage and who can take us on this journey."
Robert Baker, who has appeared in SLAC's two previous productions of "Saturday's Warrior" and "Salt Lake, Salt Lake," will play Richard M. Nixon, with William March, last seen in David Kranes' "Winter of the Deer," as Henry Kissinger.
Borgenicht noted that Lees' script is purposely written to cast against type.
"We were not looking for impersonators or look-alikes. In fact, we were looking for just the opposite," she said. "The viewer is freed from any expectations. This is not some `Saturday Night Live' take on Richard Nixon."
Nevins agreed: "We have to establish early that we're not trying to imitate Nixon and Kissinger. These are public figures and everyone comes to the theater already knowing who they are or who they think they are. Our feeling was that if we relieve the audience of this, they can deal with the ideas in the larger context of the play - what these men were saying. There's no attempt to say that this is historical fact."
"Part of the fascination with this," said Borgenicht, "is that it could very well have happened this way. Fran (Pruyn) is using Russ Lees' annotated script. There are a number of references and it's well researched. Russ used known facts to invent this imaginary night."
Borgenicht added that "We saw Oliver Stone's movie, `Nixon,' . . . the video . . . because we were curious and I think the main thing we got out of it was that what Stone did in four and a half hours, Russ Lees did in 80 minutes - and much more imaginatively and interestingly."
Adds Nevins: "Stone's agenda was so apparent. Russ takes a much fairer look, recognizing Nixon's humanity and his importance."
Both Borgenicht and Nevins felt strongly that "Nixon's Nixon" had to open SLAC's 1996-97 season and be timed to coincide with the upcoming presidential election.
"It's pretty well known that Nixon was (presidential candidate) Dole's mentor," said Nevins. "I think Dole is a decent, civil person. The election and this play are not unconnected things."
Borgenicht added that Dole has said he admires Nixon's resiliency.
"There were all these connections in choosing this play and placing it in the season where we did."
- "NIXON'S NIXON" initially played a four-week run at the 99-seat MCC Theatre on West 28th St. in New York City, considered to be an off-off-Broadway house. This engagement was so successful that the production was moved to the 250-seat Westside Arts Theater/Downstairs on West 43rd St.
There was a brief report by Peter Marks in the New York Times last fall that such major players as the Shubert Organization and Jujamcyn Theaters were both interested in the production.
"You kind of assume that when you write a play, no one's ever going to read it," said Lees. "I very much wanted a New York production - that's still something to strive for (as a playwright). So I was thrilled to even get `a New York production' even though I didn't realize that this also meant the New York Times was going to review it."
But timing is everything.
"The movie `Nixon' hadn't come out yet, but the movie's public relations people were out generating lots of interest in Richard Nixon, so the play ended up getting a lot of press attention - even in that small MCC space," Lees said, noting that representatives of such prestigious political publications as the Nation and the Washington Times - writers who don't normally view much theater - reviewed the play.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Ticket prices, performance times
Russell Lees' "Nixon's Nixon" will be presented Oct. 23-Dec. 1 in the Upstairs Theatre at Salt Lake Acting Company, 168 W. 500 North.
Discounted preview performances ($19.50 plus ArtTix handling fee) will be at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23-25, followed by the production's formal opening night on Saturday, Oct. 26.
Curtain during the regular run will be 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 and 7 p.m. on Sundays. All seats are reserved. All tickets are priced at $24.50, plus ArtTix fee. They may be purchased in advance through any ArtTix outlets (the Capitol Theatre box office and selected Albertsons stores) and at the theater prior to showtime. For reservations, call ArtTix at 355-2787.
There is also a $10 "student rush" ticket - if seating is available - one-half hour prior to curtain time.