BREAKING MAD
Bryan Cranston, center stage and riveting, plays the unhinged anchorman of an updated, gimmick-filled adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s dark 1976 film
IN Broadway’s “Network,” Bryan Cranston does the impossible: Playing Howard Beale, the so-called mad prophet of the airwaves, he makes Peter Finch’s Oscarwinning turn feel like yesterday’s news.
So mesmerizing is the “Breaking Bad” star as the vulnerable, volatile newscaster that there should be an insert in the Playbill: Please pick up your jaw before leaving the theater.
If only the rest of the show was even half as good.
“Network” seemed far-fetched and outrageous in 1976, when Paddy Chayefsky’s dark movie masterpiece premiered. But that was years before cable news and reality TV. These days, Beale’s immortal line, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” sounds com- pletely plausible.
Still, it’s tricky to update a classic, especially one with such indelible performances. Howard’s best friend, newsman Max Schumacher, and the take-no-prisoners programming executive, Diana Christensen, were played by William Holden and Faye Dunaway at the height of their power. Here, they’ve gone to Tony Goldwyn (“Scandal”) and “Orphan Black” star Tatiana Maslany, both of them miscast and bland.
For the story to work, Diana needs to be irresistible, commanding and cutthroat, a ratingsobsessed vampire able to both captivate Max and inspire him to lament, “I’m not sure she’s capable of any real feelings.”
Maslany’s Diana seems more like just a pushy climber, while Goldwyn’s husky line readings are no substitute for actually bringing gravity to the part.
Playwright Lee Hall (“Billy Elliot”), hewing closely and at times verbatim to Chayefsky’s screenplay, fails to rustle up any resonance or fresh insight for today’s era of fake news. What he has done is create a showcase for Cranston, who nails his character’s craziness, wisdom and sin- cerity. He even steps off the stage now and then to chat up some theatergoers.
Compared to director Ivo van Hove’s earlier reinventions — the one-man food fight in 2007’s “The Misanthrope,” the rainstorm of blood in 2015’s “A View From the Bridge” — his staging here feels conventional. “Network” has video, Steadicams and projections of close-ups, but that’s hardly envelope-pushing in a story about TV.
Still, there are gimmicks. As a countdown clock ticks off seconds until showtime, the actors onstage do yoga (downwardfacing stunt?), have their makeup applied and chat among themselves. Their set is a sleek triptych, with a huge screen for streaming live video and commercials flanked by a glassboxed control room on one end and a working restaurant/bar on the other. In the latter, called Foodwork, 22 theatergoers, who’ve paid anywhere from $299 to $399 a ticket, dine on shrimp rolls and beef tenderloin, surrounded by the actors. Is Hove saying we consume news like entertainment — or is he hoping for another food fight? In either case, unless you’re sitting onstage eating with them, it makes no real impact.
It’s a shame. “Network” starts with a bang, as Cranston delivers one of Howard’s unhinged live broadcasts, with everyone hustling around him like a single, one-celled organism. But when the focus veers from Howard to corporate doublespeak and clichéd melodrama — at least as it’s played here — about an extramarital affair, it’s time to switch channels.