Review of Reviews: Stage

The Farnsworth Invention

Music Box Theatre, New York

(212) 239-6200

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★★★

In 1989, an exciting courtroom drama opened on Broadway, the work of a promising new American playwright, said Linda Winer in Newsday. A Few Good Men was a hit, which its author, Aaron Sorkin, later adapted into a film. He ended up spending the next decade and a half working in Hollywood, bringing his compelling portraits of characters in moral struggles and “snappy, smart, hyperarticulate” dialogue to large and small screens. But while Sorkin went on to write and produce critically acclaimed television programs, including The West Wing, he left the theater behind—until now. The Farnsworth Invention, Sorkin’s second Broadway play, at last fulfills the promise of his first. “Breezy and shrewd, smart-alecky and idealistic, the quick-moving drama presents two sides to the still-contentious story behind the invention of television.”

Sorkin thus takes a large and satisfying bite out of the hand that feeds him, said Howard Shapiro in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Television has made him both famous and rich, but Sorkin portrays it as a medium conceived in sin. Philo T. Farnsworth, here “wonderfully portrayed” by Jimmi Simpson, was the Idaho farmboy who had the technological insight that cleared the way for the invention of television. But David Sarnoff, the self-made head of RCA, which dominated radio, wanted to control the new medium as well. He used all his power to prevent Farnsworth from sharing the credit or the profits from his world-changing device. In a superb performance, Hank Azaria gives Sarnoff “a striking authority,” and even earns our sympathy. Sorkin has written an excellent play, even though his version of the real-life tale strays so far from the facts, it should be thought of as a work of fiction.

In the end, The Farnsworth Invention isn’t much different than one of Sorkin’s TV or movie scripts, said Simon Houpt in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The play “pits two of his favorite character types against each other: the creative misfit whose unique contributions are brushed aside by an indifferent world and the idealist in power.” But because we already know how the story ends, this plot loses much of its inherent suspense. Filled with clumsy exposition and unnecessary characters, The Farnsworth Invention becomes “one of the most entertaining History Channel documentaries ever presented on a New York stage.” Sorkin didn’t exactly pick a subject that cried out for theatrical treatment. Still, it’s good to have him back on Broadway.

The Seafarer

Booth Theatre,

New York

(212) 239-6200

★★★

A gang of drunken Irishmen “may not sound like your ideal people to spend the holidays with,” said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. But you haven’t met the hapless and often hilarious five characters who hold down the bar in Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, downing whiskey after whiskey on Christmas Eve. David Morse plays Sharky, who’s trying futilely to stay off the sauce. His evening takes a harrowing turn when Lockhart, an “incongruously dapper stranger,” shows up at the door to play a poker game for Sharky’s soul. “Yes, he’s the very devil,” though Ciarán Hinds’ excellently understated performance keeps this metaphysical intrusion from upsetting the play’s down-to-earth feel. The other three actors—Conleth Hill, Sean Mahon, and Jim Norton—inhabit their parts with affecting ease, and McPherson distinctively fleshes out each character. An evening that at first promises to be a bleak journey to the bottom of a bottle of whiskey “turns out to be a thinking-person’s alternative to It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Though amusing, said Clive Barnes in the New York Post, McPherson’s dialogue “is standard issue Irish-playwright, whiskey-sodden banter.” It’s far too flimsy a support for McPherson’s themes of damnation and redemption. McPherson takes a big, bold chance by daring to make the devil himself a character in a seemingly realistic play, and Hinds more or less pulls it off. But McPherson’s vision of evil is disappointingly unimaginative, and his story is predictable. He aspires to match the themes explored by great Irish playwrights of the past, from John Millington Synge to Sean O’Casey. But their plays “had a kind of mad poetry in them,” while The Seafarer, under its rough and hard-drinking surface, is a conventional tale of holiday uplift.