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<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;page-break-after:avoid;text-autospace:none'><b><font
size=5 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-weight:bold'>'Nixon's
Nixon' at Actors' Summit a timely and intensely entertaining play about Nixon
and Kissinger<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;page-break-after:avoid;text-autospace:none'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>by <a
href="mailto:tonycritic@gmail.com"><font color=black><span style='color:windowtext'>Tony
Brown/Plain Dealer Theater Critic</span></font></a> Sunday
October 26, 2008<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><b><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>REVIEW</span></font></b>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><b><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>What:</span></font></b>
Actors' <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Summit</st1:City></st1:place>
presents the play by Russell Lees, directed by Constance Thackaberry. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><b><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>When:</span></font></b>
Runs through Nov. 9. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><b><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Where:</span></font></b>
86 <st1:address w:st="on"><st1:Street w:st="on">Owen Brown St.</st1:Street>, <st1:City
w:st="on">Hudson</st1:City></st1:address>. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><b><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Tickets:</span></font></b>
$25-$28. 330-342-0800. Or actorssummit.org. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Politics isn't just local. It's personal, as becomes
immediately and lastingly obvious in "Nixon's Nixon," which made a
timely opening over the weekend at Actors' <st1:City w:st="on">Summit</st1:City>
in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hudson</st1:place></st1:City>. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>It might at first seem opportunistic to stage a show
just now that portrays what might have happened on the alcohol-drenched night
of Aug. 7, 1974 -- two days before Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency --
in the Lincoln Sitting Room of the White House. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>But Russell Lees' brilliantly constructed and
language-rich script takes us beyond the last days of an unpopular president. <a
name=more></a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>It also demonstrates Lord Acton's observation:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men
are almost always bad men." That's a handy thing to have in mind as we
head to voting booth. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>And it provides two glorious opportunities for actors
to revel in two historically gigantic roles, roles that Lees has deepened with
his imagings. Actors' <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Summit</st1:place></st1:City>
rises to the challenge with bravura performances by Neil Thackaberry and George
Roth. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Nixon's Nixon" made its debut in <st1:State
w:st="on">New York</st1:State> in 1995, and the Actors' <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Summit</st1:place></st1:City> playbill goes out of its way to
indicate that not a word was changed to make it more timely now. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Nixon (Thackaberry, bigger than life and twice as
paranoid) does appear in "Nixon's Nixon." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>But for Lees, it is Secretary of State Henry A.
Kissinger (Roth, studiously exact in his manners and accent, and hilarious in
his approach to the wacked-out president) who is "Nixon" to Nixon. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>The play uses a real, and famous, meeting between the
two men who crafted the most important treaties in the detente with Soviet
Union and normalized relations with the People's Republic of <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>(They also, to be fair and balanced, came up with the
cockamamie idea of bombing <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cambodia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and trying to keep it a secret.) <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Between hits of brandy and vodka, these two powerful
men battle each other and themselves as they try to find a way to salvage their
reputations, their accomplishments after Watergate. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>In the play, they toy with the awful -- and awfully
funny, in retrospect -- idea of creating a foreign crisis diversion,
Thackaberry's Nixon playing the mad Gen. Jack D. Ripper and Roth's Kissinger
his conniving Dr. Strangelove. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>The two come to their senses. Nixon says he will
resign, His "Machiavelli with a belly" sighs with relief. The forces
of history, riffed on so nicely by Lees, Thackaberry and Roth, march on.
Suddenly it's 2008. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>What have we learned? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:5.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:
5.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'><br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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