Obviously, Richard Nixon did not invent self-serving moral corruption in political life, but he deflowered the nation’s fairy tale vision of democracy by making us face inescapably the existence of pragmatic venality among some of the most elevated people we had hired to serve us.
Such a thought, four decades on in the world of Trump, Christie, Cruz and some might argue Hillary, now seems hopelessly naïve even to those of us who lived through it.
But Peter Morgan’s docu-play Frost/Nixon, getting a masterful production at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, contains numerous warning lessons relevant to our current curdled climate. Chief is how the public’s conferring power on a surrogate can convince that public servant that the power is in itself justification for whatever purposes the wielder wishes, good or ill.
Yet, the strength of the acclaimed 2006 play and 2008 film is that no one, least of all Nixon, is depicted in pure white hats or black hats. That facet is brought out in the Maltz’s production better than in any earlier edition we’ve seen thanks to a stunningly complex multi-faceted creation by actor John Jellison under the impeccable direction of J. Barry Lewis.
By Bill Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com, for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Feb. 13, 2016
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