2/4/2019
I got into a short, spirited debarred with a
colleague in critic-dom who, like me, had seen Network, and a friend who had yet to see it (we were all together
at the time, having crossed paths en route to other shows) over casting choices
in director Ivo Van Hove’s
production of Lee Hall’s stage
adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s
classic, darkly satirical and frighteningly prescient screenplay of the same
name. They maintained that the key role of mad news broadcaster Howard Beale’s
producer and best friend, Max Schumacher, needed an older man than Tony Goldwyn to fulfill the “craggy,
middle aged man” of the film’s William Holden (though he’s just about the same
age as Holden was). The critic also asserted that Tatiana Maslany, whom I had liked very much, as ambitious young
Diana Christiansen, the producer who usurps Max and gives Howard Beale his
forum as the “Mad Prophet of the Air”, didn’t have the same brilliantly
seductive heat as Faye Dunaway, whose turn in the role won her an Oscar.
“Watch the film
again,” he advised, “you’ll see the difference.”
Ah,
well there’s the crux of the matter. And I don’t have an answer. But maybe I
have a key for consideration.
I
had seen Network in a movie theatre,
ages ago, upon its release, maybe again later (ironically on network
television) and I had read it once or twice, after a fashion, through the surprisingly
perfunctory novelization by usually-better Burton Wohl as “Sam Hedrin” (see
footnote*). I loved Network’s highly
quotable, sometimes devastatingly articulate, rage, and got as caught up in the
experience as most, I imagine; but I never had “revisitation compulsion”—that
urge that makes you watch a favorite film or occasionally scenes and passages
over and over again. So I forgot it, except in a general sense.
And
so I came to the stage version of Network
about as freshly as one can, under those circumstances. And I have to say,
none of that stuff bugged me in the slightest. I got caught up completely in
Van Hove’s vision of the piece, which is spectacularly media high tech, to the
point where one can argue that it redefines and blurs the boundaries of
theatricality. Though the set (Jan
Versweyveld) is physically and literally a multi-segmented television
studio, with screens of all sizes within and without the proscenium, it is also
used as a black box space for scenes outside the studio; but just as often, a
scene literally outside, or one
inside, in an enclosed area not remotely visible via conventional live-theatre
sight-lines, is visible only onscreen.
And Bryan Cranston’s brilliant take
on Howard Beale shows no direct evidence of being beholden to Peter Finch
(notwithstanding whatever internalized inspiration Cranston may have taken).
It’s the same basic psychological profile, but he handles the crackup in his
own way, using the advantage of live theatre to make it even a little more
volatile; one of the most memorable moments has him having taken his
broadcaster’s chair on camera, having literally come in from the rain, in his
raincoat and pajamas…and, for want of a better way to put it, seeming to literally collect his thoughts before
speaking. And taking a survey of what’s in his mind for…I didn’t time it, but
I’d bet at least a full minute.
I’ve
said this before about musical theatre revivals, but it also holds true for
that rarer creature, the non-musical stage adaptation of a classic film.
Whatever the new creative team does, whether in replication or re-imagining,
whether anybody involved even saw the
original or not, it’s still a conversation with the original iteration, because
the original was also the combined effort of a creative team. Decisions are
being made based on their choices.
And
I was personally much more intrigued by adapter Lee Hall’s approach. The script
is apparently all Chayefsky, but not all from the shooting script. He was
given access to other drafts, interviews, essays, archival stuff, and he drew
from those too. And of course in adding stuff, he subtracted some other stuff.
For example, in the stage version, Max is deprived of his affectionate but
ironic and damning farewell speech to Diana. One assumes that Hall and Van Hove
decided it covered ground we already knew, though I’d debate that. Even more,
he chose to add a scene for network
head Arthur Jensen (Nick Wyman on
Broadway, Ned Beatty in the film), this one between him and Diana, this one
expressing his prescient, futuristic view of what mass media would become,
delivered along with an animated, illustrative graphic. And I’m not so sure the
gain of impressing us with the prescience that is really of course Chayefsky’s,
and which is, in a sense, stuff we knew before we walked into the theatre,
because we live its consequences and ramifications every day, doesn’t diminish
the power of Jensen being limited to that one earlier scene, where he
evangelistically explains to Howard Beale how Beale has meddled with the forces
of nature. I’m not so sure we should ever see Jensen as anyone other than Beale
sees him. (I’m also not so sure of the casting of Mr. Wyman, who is compelling
and commanding as always, but cannot surprise us because that walks in the door with him; whereas Ned Beatty, and
one assumes, the similarly built Richard Cordery, who played this part at the
National Theatre in London, was a kind of schlubby guy who transforms into a godlike presence. The loss of the effect seems
like a loss of narrative power.)
But
all that said, the endgame is still a brilliant and unique evening of telling,
relevant theatre. And what’s as important as anything else is this:
At the matinee I attended, after the well-deserved
standing ovation curtain call, a huge upstage screen showed a chronological
montage of every President, from Reagan onward, taking the oath of office at
the swearing-in ceremony. The entire
oath for each President. The still-standing audience, almost every single
person in it, orchestra, mezzanine and balcony, stayed rock-still to watch. By
the time we got to Clinton, I realized what was about to happen. I turned to my
companion and said, “Everybody is staying to boo Trump.”
Well, they cheered Obama first. But then came
Trump. And sure enough: boos as loud, long and lusty as the curtain call bravos
had been. The full house needed that catharsis. Craved it. Would not be denied
it.
On balance, one has to conclude that, for the most
part, the stage adaptation of Network is
getting it right…
*footnote: The novelization was basically the script in past-tense
prose; not because Mr. Wohl was a perfunctory hack—quite the reverse—but
because Chayefsky didn’t want his script reimagined or embellished or fleshed
out, and slashed so much of Wohl’s work that the veteran bestselling novelizer,
frustrated at having his work preemptively judged, slapped the punny pseudonym “Sam
Hedrin” onto it. (Among eight other script adaptations he wrote were The China Syndrome, That Certain Summer,
Posse and a volume of All in the
Family short stories. He was also a novelist in his own right, having
penned thrillers such as the Ten-Tola
Bars and potboilers such as A Cold
Wind in August, which formed the basis of the cult favorite Lola Albright
movie.
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