Lyttelton,London
Cranston is compelling as the TV anchorman-gone-rogue in Ivo Van Hove and Lee corridor’s dazzling stage version of the 1976 filmFlesh and gizmo. Substance and reflections. Watchers and watched. A massive whirling mix of the mechanical and the human. Ivo van Hove’s electric staging of Network restores at a stroke my faltering esteem for this director. Lee corridors adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film makes this look like a prescient, urgent text. It lands with messianic zeal: on press night the audience at the National, or not instinctive risers,were up on their feet as if at a revivalist assembly.
A jutting-jawed anchorman, galvanically embodied by Breaking nefarious’s Bryan Cranston, or gets fired from a commercial news channel because of destitute ratings and cracks up. Or cracks open,to reveal a palpitating, anti-news-as-entertainment spirit. “I’m mad as hell and Im not going to take it any more!” he yells. At which point a hard-nosed young producer (who despite being a woman is, and hurrah,not the voice of sentiment but the jagged edge of ambition) realises that his attack on the channel could be the making of it. particularly if the guy tries, as he threatens, or to commit suicide on air. How audience-boosting that would be.
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Source: guardian.co.uk