There are individuals, very intelligent individuals living in the world today, who view Paddy Chayefsky’s film NETWORK through something other than a satirical lens. Which is entirely understandable given what network TV looked like in the mid-1970s and, to some extent, the state of our media landscape in 2017 when Lee Hall’s stage adaptation hit the boards in London en route to Broadway. Honestly, Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning script was so forward-thinking, so twistedly prescient, this could be a documentary, and it’s kind of amazing that it took people 40 years to take a crack at a stage adaptation. But the more things change, the more they stay the same…and maintain their ability to scare the piss out of you.
The knives are lethal and the cuts are many in the Group Rep’s production of NETWORK directed by Tom Lazarus. With Bert Emmett fronting an equally enthusiastic and bloodthirsty cast, the Group Rep’s NETWORK is equal parts rollicking, disturbing and thought-provoking. Dexterously employing an audience-as-masses backdrop in a relatively small performance space, Lazarus and his company – especially Emmett’s Howard Beale – effectively transform us into a cult or a mob. We are encouraged to get “mad as hell” at so many things, but in a good way. Not such a heavy ask, really, when you step outside the experience of the play and think of everything happening on the air, on the streets of Los Angeles. Or anywhere.
The Group Rep’s physical and dramatic representation of a 70s TV newsroom is spot-on. Also credited as the production scenic designer, Lazarus gives us the news desk with its clocks depicting times in different parts of the world, alongside a sound booth behind which the show is being orchestrated or overseen. A veritable hive of production staff descends on the anchor to touch up his makeup, adjust the position of a water glass (or whatever is in there), remove extraneous towels, etc. just before the camera rolls. During blackouts, we hear familiar ad jingles from years past.
“I think I’m going to kill myself,” a Emmet’s despondent Howard tells his longtime friend, and head of news Max Schumacher (Larry Toffler) after learning that his career as an anchorman is over after 25 years. “I’m going to blow my brains out right in the middle of the seven o’clock news.” “You’ll get a hell of a rating, I’ll tell you that,” returns Max. “A fifty share. Easy. We could make a series out of it: Suicide of the week.” The men are drunk, and they can’t be serious, but yes they are. Because this is what things have come to. Amidst reports of Middle Eastern terrorists, attempted presidential assassinations, kidnapping, media consolidation and all sorts of chaos, everything comes down to ratings, shares and eyeballs, and the news division is not pulling its weight. Whether because he fully understands this or otherwise, Howard repeats his promise on the air to kill himself after his final show, causing everything to go haywire to the point that the entire staff at UBS try to drag him from his chair.
This meltdown causes problems on any number of levels. On the one hand, Howard has violated the first rule of news: you do not become the news. But now people are tuning in again to see if he’ll actually do it. And amidst plans for a corporate merger that will see UBS subsumed by media giant CCA, nobody wants waves. So they allow an outwardly contrite Howard an on-air send-off, and things really get interesting. “I just ran out of bullshit,” Howard explains, and he’s just getting started.
The man starts speaking his mind, telling his truth. The more unhinged he becomes, the less he can be controlled. But what does anybody care…the viewers love it! Forget retirement or on-air suicide, this guy isn’t going anywhere. Whether slumped over his news desk in ratty pajamas, the smartest of tailored suits or guru duds (Shon LeBlanc artfully dresses him in all three), Emmett’s Howard Beale is utterly captivating. Taking Howard from the depths of despair to a cult leader brainwashed by his own conspiratorial convictions. The role won Peter Finch an Oscar and Bryan Cranston his second Tony Award. Emmett makes it his own.
Watching Howard’s fall, rise and reinvention with the most predatory of interest is the network’s director of programing, Diana Christensen (Michelle McGregor), a woman so ratings-obsessed that the thought of ascending shares can literally bring her to org*sm (and does). Diana’s cutthroat devotion to her job positively bewitches Max with whom she starts an affair, much to the dismay of Max’s wife, Louise (Belinda Howell, trying to pump righteous indignation into a role that Hall could probably have axed in the adaptation). During the non-Beale focused scenes, Diana’s rapacious sultriness becomes the play’s engine and conscience. McGregor – equal parts girl Friday and tiger shark – nails it.
NETWORK employs a huge cast, giving several of its supporting players some juicy cameos. As fat cat studio head Arthur Jensen Fox Carney employs a manic giggle that makes him sound like something out of a BATMAN’s rogue’s gallery. How bemusing were Chayefsky-an lines, “You get up on your little twenty-one-inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and Ford and General Electric” in the 1970s? They land a little bit differently now.
Plaudits also to Bob McCollum whose warm-up act kicking off the Beale shows brings the audience into the action. As Artistic Director Doug Haverty noted during his pre-curtain (or maybe pre-camera) remarks, this play is designed to be “part theater, part therapy.” In these very troubled times, both are desperately needed.
NETWORK plays through June 29 at 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood.
Photo of Bert Emmett and the company by Doug Engalla
Reader Reviews
Videos