By Eugene Paul

 

If you want to know where The Front Page was written in 1927, it was down the road from Charlie and Helen MacArthur’s Nyack home, “Pretty Penny”, in little old Piermont, New York, at a no longer used girl’s school which he and Ben Hecht took over. And every day, the girls, Ben’s wife, Rose, and Charlie’s wife, Helen carried hot lunches, covered by white damask napkins, to their hard working boys.  It’s a tidy walk, so maybe the girls used bicycles. Not too many women drove those newfangled automobiles. Charlie and Ben were having a ball, reliving their Chicago newspaper days, with no restraints.  And there it all is in the lovingly painstaking revival by director Jack O’Brien,  on  Broadway,  crammed to the gills with famous star names doing star turns,  smashingly designed by Douglas W. Schmidt, dressed to achingly nostalgic perfection by Ann Roth and an absolute wallow in the good old, bad old days. Which are getting a run for their money these raucous times.

 

We’re in the old Press Room in the Criminal Courts Building in Chicago, its great, arched windows  overlooking the dark, turbid area where  the convicted criminal, Earl Williams, who has shot a black cop, is about to be  hanged.  It’s a Friday evening in October, 1928, and the usual reporters for the many Chicago papers are hanging out, sniping and ragging, waiting for that big event. Bensinger of the Tribune, (ineffably outstanding Jefferson Mays) minces in, disgusted with the rabble who use his roll top desk and his gold telephone spreading germs all over everything.  The ragging gets worse since all the guys are otherwise in the same boat: waiting for that big scoop.  That they never seem to get, because Hildy Johnson (smoothly bumptious John Slattery) always seems to get there first.  And there he is.  With suitcase?  Hildy is getting married to a great gal, leaving the rat race, getting a respectable job, a new life. Come to say good bye to you bums, off to catch the train. The ragging compounds.

 

Julieta Cervantes

From left, Christopher McDonald, John Goodman, Dylan Baker and Clarke Thorell

 

Until none too bright Sheriff Hartman ( slammin’ John Goodman) comes charging in with news: that Commy criminal, Earl Williams has escaped but he can’t have got far and they’re gonna nail him. Instant bustle on the telephones and then everybody off to do leg work.

 

Julieta Cervantes

John Slattery (left) and Nathan Lane

 

Except Hildy. And crashing through the window comes Earl Williams (perfect John Magaro). He’s a terrified nebbish, shot the cop by accident.  Hildy’s got the scoop of his life but he needs help.  He calls his editor, Walter Burns (the greatest hullabaloo on Broadway, Nathan Lane). Then, in a flash of desperate inspiration, he hides Williams in reporter Bensinger’s roll top desk.

 

Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, former Chicago newspaper reporters when they were very young, both went on to “respectable” jobs if becoming prominent screen writers falls under that heading.  At one point Hecht was the highest paid Mr. Fixit in Hollywood.  Whenever anything or anybody got into script trouble, they came to him.  MacArthur wrote his wife, Helen Hayes her Oscar in 1932 for “The Sin of Madelon Claudet”. Hecht was on that, too.

 

In spite of what appears to be brash, slap dash writing tumbling out a cast of stock characters, there is a solid, well worked out frame to the play which drives story, the heart of a show, like a locomotive, and director O’Brien takes advantage of every bit.  He sets up meticulously: where most Broadway shows open curtainless, a vogue adapted from Off-Broadway, O’Brien uses the sumptuous curtain at the Broadhurst from the very beginning and lets it fall at each act.  There are three, as in the odd old days.  But – before each act falls, he flash freezes his whole stage scene as if in a black and white photo still, summoning up the early days of newspaper reportage.  He starts each act unfreezing from his black and white into color. It’s part of the marvelous lighting effects devised by brilliant lighting designer Brian McDevitt, a vital element enhancing O’Brien’s concept for this richly handsome as well as rollicking production.

 

Nathan Lane as Walter Burns is not only at his manic best, he has at his total command every twitch, every physical clowning posture, every mossy old device and makes it unfailingly hysterically funny.  He is a great clown.  And great clowns are great actors. John Slattery, Robert Morse, Jefferson Mays, Dylan Baker, Dann Florek, Christopher McDonald are stylishly in top form.  David Pittu, Sherie Rene Scott, Holland Taylor, Micah Stock, Lewis J. Stadlen, excellent. Director O’Brien has winnowed boffo performances from his large and giving company, everyone at his best.  No wonder ticket prices have already leaped in price.

                                                         

The Front Page.  At the Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44^th Street.  Tickets: $67-$167. 212-239-6200. 2hrs, 45 min. Thru Jan 29, 2017.