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Gore Vidal’s 1960 political thriller returns to Broadway in a starry staging

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

BROADWAY REVIEW

Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” represents the Republican Party’s current worst nightmare – a deadlocked national convention fight over their presidential choice.

Red, white and blue bunting atmospherically decks the interior of the Schoenfeld Theatre, where a new production of Vidal’s 1960 comedy-drama opened on Sunday.

Half a century has passed since the original (a previous revival appeared in 2000), and while the play’s vintage conventions and clothes seem quaint today, its satirical truths regarding moral values endure.

Still a witty, insightful study in American back room politics, “The Best Man” details a nasty, intensifying conflict between two contrasting contenders vying to be an unnamed party’s presidential candidate.

William Russell (John Larroquette), is an intellectual former Secretary of State with marital problems. His younger rival, Joseph Cantwell (Eric McCormack), is depicted as a grandstanding Senator who threatens to smear Russell with a secret file about his unstable mental health. When Russell gets some inside dirt about Cantwell’s sexual past, he agonizes whether to use it.

Although the playwright obviously favors Russell over Cantwell, his story packs plenty of wicked surprises and stinging laughs as colorful individuals fling in and out of a couple of hotel suites in Philadelphia, including their wives and advisors, assorted party hacks and even a former President.

Proficient actors appear in director Michael Wilson’s solid production, but they’re not always performing at their best and the show seems under-powered. Fortunately, Vidal’s very well-made drama generates sufficient drama over its three acts to compensate for these less than brilliant turns.

The biggest crowd-pleaser is a slyly funny Angela Lansbury, sporting a magnolia accent and fussy frocks as a peppery national committeewoman. James Earl Jones genially lends his magisterial presence to the folksy ex-President with one foot in the grave. Jefferson Mays drolly provides a cameo as an anxious nobody who knew Cantwell way back when.

While she neatly tosses off an occasional zinger, Candace Bergen often appears hesitant as Russell’s genteel spouse, and it’s debatable whether that’s her interpretation of this apolitical lady or simply unease at performing onstage. On the other jungle-red hand, Kerry Butler is sweetly malicious as Cantwell’s catty Southern wife.