The Front Page will star Nathan Lane as Walter Burns, John Slattery as Hildy Johnson, John Goodman as Sheriff Hartman, Jefferson Mays as Bensinger, Holland Taylor as Mrs. Grant, and Sherie Rene Scott as Mollie Malloy, with additional casting to be announced.
The show is set in the press room of Chicago's Criminal Courts Building which is buzzing with reporters covering the story of an escaped prisoner. When star reporter Hildy Johnson (Slattery) accidentally discovers the runaway convict, he and his editor Walter Burns (Lane) conspire to hide the man from the other reporters, while they chase the biggest scoop of their careers.
With his jauntily angled fedora and suit jacket slung over his shoulder, Slattery comes across as more of a Rat Pack swinger than a flapper-following flirt just before the Jazz Age was snuffed out by Black Monday. But it suits him and he's an instant bright spot among the malcontents who've been forced into a long night awaiting the 7 AM hanging of Earl Williams, an illiterate white man who has been convicted of killing a black cop. Hildy's plans inspire caustic merriment among his pals, who insist it won't be long until he 'has seven kids, a mortgage and belongs to a country club.' There's also much ribbing of New York newspapers, especially the New York Times ('might as well work for a bank,' one says), inside jokes from two authors who knew newspapers, Chicago and its Second City neuroses better than anyone.
So I left the theater feeling the rush of some exhilarating teamwork still coursing freshly through my brain. Floating up there most buoyantly is the impression of Lane's priceless turn as Walter Burns - an editor so voraciously news hungry he could survive purely on a diet of scoops. In boxy pin-striped suit and bushy black mustache, Lane hurls Burns's blunt-force insults and bolts of impotent rage in all directions, with the timing and élan that have made him one of the great comic actors of our age. Slattery, playing the roguish Hildy Johnson, Burns's restive star reporter at the Chicago Examiner, reveals again the gift for the kind of swaggering masculinity he displayed as Roger Sterling on 'Mad Men.' Mays and Baker, too, are deployed here to maximum enjoyable effect as a pair of courthouse reporters - Mays portraying a skittish germaphobe, Baker a diligent leg man.
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Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2017 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Costume Design for a Play | Ann Roth |
2017 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play | Nathan Lane |
2017 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | The Front Page |
2017 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Set Design for a Play | Douglas W. Schmidt |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Director of a Play | Jack O'Brien |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play | Nathan Lane |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | The Front Page |
2017 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Set Design (Play or Musical) | Douglas W. Schmidt |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play | Nathan Lane |
2017 | Tony Awards | Best Scenic Design of a Play | Douglas W. Schmidt |
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