[NEohioPAL] Review of Beck's "The Farnsworth Invention"

[Bob Abelman]

Formula doesn't quite translate in Beck bio-drama 

 

Bob Abelman

 

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald 3/20/09

 

Fans of television's West Wing and Sports Night will find something very familiar about Aaron Sorkin's The Farnsworth Invention, currently on stage at the Beck Center for the Arts.  In form and in function, this play follows the recipe for success the playwright brought to primetime drama in the late-1990s. 

 

Sorkin's failsafe strategy for TV was to introduce a core of intelligent and immediately likable characters and place them in an alluring and intense work environment that is strictly off limits to mere mortals.  He then inundates the audience with fast-paced, industry-specific babble that is hard to follow and impossible to comprehend.  This establishes the credibility of these special individuals, who understand this babble, and the story delves into what makes them tick, warts and all.



West Wing explored the people that run the man that runs the nation, and offered a behind-closed-doors peek into the intriguing world of global politics and White House politicking.  Sports Night featured the sportscasters who make elite athletes famous, and gave us a backstage look at the high-pressure world of broadcast journalism.


In The Farnsworth Invention, Sorkin applies this formula to the world of technological innovation in the late-1920s.  We are introduced to two ambitious visionaries-the self-taught, farm boy savant with the ability to transform ideas into inventions and the immigrant media mogul who built his empire with the sweat equity of others.  Together, they made television a reality.  In a blur of rapid-fire, high-brow banter, we hear but do not really learn about the physics that drives early TV technology, the intricacies of the stock market crash that encouraged ingenuity, and the nuance of copyright law.  


This formula works brilliantly in episodic, hour-long, made-for-TV drama, where the story can methodically unfold across the eight months of a television season. It is less successful in a single installment of made-for-theater theater.  Way too much information is crammed into this two hour, two act play. Yet, because it is about the complex lives and incredible accomplishments of actual people, it seems as if not nearly enough information is provided.


Sorkin's play relies on drive-by dramatic devices to deliver loads of information in an efficient manner.  Character-defining events are reduced to flashes of flashback. Technological triumphs are truncated into mere eureka moments.  Exposition is condensed into snappy one-liners delivered by mogul David Sarnoff, who also provides the audience with a running analysis of inventor Philo Farnsworth's life.  His nemesis, Farnsworth, responds with his own dueling color commentary about the idealistic but ruthless Sarnoff.  A Greek chorus of assorted wives, colleagues and investors are brought on to move along the storyline, and then go away.

 

Director Scott Spence does a marvelous job of keeping things clean, crisp and in a state of perpetual motion.  The plot never loiters, the show's momentum never lags and the bare set facilitates the storytelling by not getting in the way.

 

Paul Floriano has created a fleshy, interesting Sarnoff, broadcasting's most notorious SOB.  His exchanges with an extremely personable Sebastian Hawkes Orr, as the naïve and self-destructive Farnsworth, help bring the script's implicit but obscured drama to the surface and make this production a piece of entertainment rather than a history lesson.  By the end of Act 2, the audience cares about these characters, warts and all, which is quite an achievement for Floriano and Orr.      

 

The large ensemble, with each member playing an assortment of characters, is quite good.  Performances by John Busser, as Farnsworth's brother-in-law, and Emily Pucell, as Farnsworth's wife, are particularly noteworthy. 

Sorkin's most recent television production, Studio 60, took place behind the scenes of a fictional live sketch comedy TV show.  It didn't make it beyond its first season on NBC.  The Farnsworth Invention, which lasted only three months on Broadway, is further proof that his recipe for success is not always successful. 


The Farnsworth Invention runs through April 11 at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood.    For tickets, which range from $17-$28, call 216-521-2540 x 10 or visit www.beckcenter.org.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20090320/badfb6e8/attachment-0003.htm>