PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: Talk Radio — Shooting From the Lip
By Harry Haun
Who would have thought, seeing Eric Bogosian in full rant and rage, tearing through harangues and hang-ups as the talk-show host of Talk Radio , that he'd one day wind up a "Law and Order" candidate — and co-star? What a difference two dozen years can make!
When the show surfaced on Broadway March 11 at the Longacre starring a red ball express named Liev Schreiber , the old firebrand showed up in the rather subdued role of esteemed playwright who, he said, puts in 70 hours of "Law and Order" work every week.
"I'm glad I'm not doing it," admitted the man who created (on page and stage) the role of the rampaging Barry Champlain, who, fueled on booze and drugs, takes callers — and no prisoners — on his abrasive, all-night radio show, spilling venom on both sides of the sound booth. "It's too hard. I love watching fabulous actors playing roles I've written."
He gestured in a very pointed fashion at the man in the middle of a mob of admirers.
"Look how suave this guy is. Isn't he the most suave guy? I was never suave like that."
Suaveness aside, Schreiber is a New Age Bogosian and gives a ferocious and staggeringly
sustained account of a man careering dizzyingly into an on-air breakdown and, worse, a full of minute of "dead air" silence that practically screams. Talk Radio was the next step in Bogosian's evolution as writer after authoring a half dozen highly successful solo
shows (Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll and so forth); basically, it too is a one-man band, garnished with subsidiary characters who act as curb-feelers for his out-of-control antics.
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"No, actually," said Schreiber, begging to differ with the solo notion. "I had all the callers there. The engine of the play is really the callers. Barry's nothing without those calls."
Howard Stern was not a reference point for Schreiber. He looked no farther than the original. "Eric Bogosian," he readily confessed, "is the inspiration for everything. The idea of ever doing that role never occurred to me. The producer, Jeffrey Richards , brought the idea to me" — and, since Richards produced the revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, which won Schreiber the Tony as 2005's Featured Actor, "yes" was pretty
immediate. "I saw the original version of both of those, and both were within a year of each other, but I never had any idea I'd wind up in them. I'm completely blessed."
Bogosian actively discouraged his family from attending the opening ("I told them, 'You
don't want to come to this one because I'm going to be pingponging all over the place'), but Schreider opted for home and hearth and shooed away press when he finally had a chance to sit down beside his proud mom and girlfriend Naomi Watts . His proud bro,
Pablo , was present, true to their fraternal tradition. Exactly a week earlier, Liev attended
Pablo's opening in Christopher Shinn 's Dying City at Lincoln Center. When complimented on his reviews, Pablo said, "Oh, thanks. I don't read them. I love the play so I hope people come see it."
Racking up his second Schreiber opening in a week, Chris Bauer (Defiance and
Broadway's last Streetcar Named Desire ) owed up to his friend-of-the-family status. "Liev and I are very, very close friends. We go back to our very first day in the Yale School of Drama. And Pablo, his brother, played my nephew in a TV series, 'The Wire.'"
You might deduce from this he was proud of his long-standing pal: "The beauty of seeing somebody who's so prolific on stage, like Liev, and knowing him as long as I have, is that I can see incrementally what kind of aesthetic obligation and problem he's solving for one
production at a time. He is working so subtly and with such sublime commitment to
character that he is creeping closer and closer into Anthony Hopkins territory where there's no space between who he is and the part he's playing. Any temptation to decorate it, that might encourage the audience to think that he's better than he is, he resists.
"This performance is really a labor of love for Liev," he continued. "He loves Eric
Bogosian, and he is devoted to him as somebody who inspired him — Live — years and years and years ago, so the whole thing is a great collision of a tribute to Eric and Liev's own great skill. I admire so much how he put this character together. I was moved. I knew
exactly who he was. And he didn't really seem to be all that worried about awards."
Mrs. Bogosian — Jo Bonney , who directed a Second Stage revival of his SubUrbia and the
excellent All That I Will Ever Be , which just concluded its run at New York Theatre Workshop — is bound for L.A. to do Fat Pig once more for the West Coast at the Geffen. "We're in the middle of casting," she said. "We'll know in about a week where we are."
The "Law and Order" faction was out in full force, a united show of support for
Bogosian — scripter (and Pulitzer Prize winner on the Side Man ) Warren Leight, Chris Noth, Vincent D'Onofrio, Kathryn Erbe, Chris Meloni and Mariska Hargitay . Seven of their co-stars actually appear on stage: Stephanie March as Schreiber's girl-Friday (and girl), Peter Hermann (as the corporate suit riding herd on him and wearing a tie personally picked for him by wife Hargitay) and five of the multi-charactered callers: Sebastian Stan, Barbara Rosenblat, Adam Sietz, Cornell Womack and Lee Sellars.
According to March, the "Law and Order" contingency "is the most supportive group of
people. They're troopers, those people. They're professionals, I'll tell ya. It's a really, really wonderful time in my life, and I'm very fortunate to count them as my friends."
A willowy blonde stunner, she happens to be married to Bobby Flay , celebrity chef for Bar Americain where the opening-night bash was held — but happily she was not pressed into any hostess duties. "I have such a good husband. He said, 'Tonight's your night, and you just have a good time and forget about everything else. He's pretty good like that."
Unlike the callers who are heard but not seen, March is one of the performers who is seen but rarely heard. It's a whole world they have created inside the glassed-off sound booth. "At first, we thought it would be very limiting to be back there, but I have to tell you we feel lucky. Nobody can hear us so we really can flesh out our own play, improvise what's happening among each other. It makes it a much richer experience for us because of it." Continued...
