Reviewed by Bill Raden
The Geffen Playhouse
Through May 17
It would be nice to report that The Power of Duff, Stephen Belber’s seriocomic, 2013 look at local TV news, is either the withering media satire that its glib, paint-coat-thin first act aspires to be, or that it succeeds in shifting to the dramatic parable about the galvanizing social power of spirituality that its gear-grinding Act 2 falls so shy of. But that would be far from the truth about this deeply flawed play.
Belber’s problems begin with his premise. Charlie Duff (Josh Stamberg) is a caddishly superficial and self-absorbed evening TV news anchor at a low-performing Rochester, NY station. When he undergoes an abrupt spiritual awakening, his spontaneous on-air prayer at the end of a newscast puts him at odds with both his serious, investigative-journalist co-anchor Sue (the fine Elizabeth Roderiguez) and the station’s cynical news director Scott (Eric Ladin), who quickly suspends him. Charlie’s prayers have become so popular, however, that corporate brass override Scott and order Charlie back on the air.
But a storyline about a failing news anchor whose transgressive ad libs turn him into an overnight national prophet is hardly original; in fact, it is virtually identical to the Howard Beale subplot from 1976’s Network, the incisive 1976 Sidney Lumet movie critique of the insanity represented by a national discourse commodified by advertising ratings. Unfortunately for Duff, such over-familiarity means that the audience is so far ahead of the action that they beat Act 1’s trajectory to the intermission by a good, if deadly 15 minutes.
Part of the genius of Network, however, was that writer Paddy Chayefsky, who got his start on live television, instinctively knew that because TV news is merely entertainment by another name, a news reader is little more than a performer — a vacant, telegenic avatar dramatically incapable of carrying a narrative that drives any deeper than the broadest of farce. He wisely allows Howard Beale to exist as emblematic cypher in support of the film’s central, backstage drama.
Belber, on the other hand, exhibits no such instincts. Rather, after the intermission, the playwright unwisely — and belatedly — attempts to backfill Charlie’s character with the kind of inner life that might lend him a weight suitable for a play that abruptly sheers away from its satire to pursue a rather conventional story of personal redemption. This entails melodramatic, albeit curiously unengaging subplots dealing with Charlie’s relationships to Ricky (Tanner Buchanan), his bitterly estranged, teenage son; Casey (Maurice Williams), a young prisoner serving a life sentence for aggravated murder; and John (Brendan Griffin), the station’s boisterous sportscaster who is revealed to be suffering from clinical depression.
Director Peter DuBois ineffectually attempts to paper over the shortcomings by throwing money at his slick production, primarily in the form of Aaron Rhyne’s lavishly produced video-projection parodies of the station’s inane news reports, featuring Joe Paulik as an unctuous field reporter. But it all proves too little and too late to salvage a text whose most fundamental deficit is language that is far too pedestrian and poetically closed off to reveal any hidden dimensions of Charlie’s opaque soul that might have the capacity to surprise.
Gil Cates Theater at Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 3 & 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 & 7 p.m.; through May 17. (310) 208-5454, GeffenPlayhouse.com.
