...With Stadlen’s gutter-mouthed tactician Murray urging Dick to brush aside his conflicts and get on board, that story is reasonably absorbing. It’s even quite moving as Pat reluctantly surrenders the rights of her family to live a life unstained by politics, despite her husband’s earlier promises. And it’s in Erbe’s portrait of the crushed hopes of a guileless woman that the play comes closest to acquiring some dimensionality. But as a multi-character drama that aims for contemporary resonance, Checkers comes up short...
...Under Terry Kinney’s broad but effective direction, the play’s collection of short scenes in many locations (it often feels as if it were more suited to the screen) speeds along, aided by Neil Patel’s simple unit set and especially Darrel Maloney’s inventive and witty projections. Anthony LaPaglia is persuasive as Nixon, finding him in voice and body language and smartly injecting the character with a youthful vigor and innocence in the flashback. What he can’t do is provide much psychological depth, but that’s due to the script. Kathryn Erbe is just plain wonderful as Pat, giving us a strong woman who’s equal parts Donna Reed and shrewd political operative. Erbe excels in projecting the bone-deep disgust Pat comes to feel about a life in politics and quite affecting in the play’s climactic battle and closing moment...
Photos made by Vineyard Theater released at their twitter page.
Be excited, tomorrow I'll publish pictures of the Opening Night Party.
I have really enjoyed all these pictures of the play. I so love Anthony. he looks like Nixon. His nose is almost the same!
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