Tony, Olivier, Emmy and Golden Globe winner Bryan Cranston ("Breaking Bad," All the Way) makes his "electrifying" (The New York Times) return to Broadway in the National Theatre's critically acclaimed production of Network, now a New York Times Critic's Pick.
In Lee Hall's adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky's Academy Award-winning film, anchorman Howard Beale (Cranston) unravels live on-screen. But when the ratings soar, the network seizes on its newfound prophet, and Howard becomes the biggest thing on TV.
"You owe yourself the thrill of watching Bryan Cranston in Network," raves Ben Brantley of The New York Times. Tony and Olivier winner Ivo van Hove (A View From the Bridge) directs this unique, immersive multimedia spectacle, also starring Tony Goldwyn ("Scandal") and Emmy Award winner Tatiana Maslany ("Orphan Black").
Catch the must-see theatrical event of the season, now through June 8.
In the case of 'Network,' Lee Hall's stage version of the 1976 Paddy Chayefsky-Sidney Lumet film about a network anchorman (played in the film by Peter Finch and onstage by Bryan Cranston) who cracks up midway through the evening news and starts telling the truth, the frosting has been whipped up by Ivo van Hove, Europe's most pretentious stage director. Working in close collaboration with Jan Versweyveld, the scenic and lighting designer, and Tal Yarden, the video designer, Mr. Van Hove has given us a TV-screens-and-Plexiglas production that looks thoroughly postmodern. The catch is that Mr. Hall's script, set in 1975, is a faithful adaptation of Chayefsky's screenplay, a once-prescient satire of the dumbed-down future of broadcast news. All of Chayefsky's predictions having long since come to pass, 'Network' is thus a musty period piece: The bomb has already gone off.
Yet even if this 'Network' doesn't entirely hang together, it's still a fabulous piece of entertainment, directed and performed with verve and showmanship. Just about every directorial choice here - the clocks that count down to Beale's news broadcasts; the applause signs demanding the audience's interaction; a final scene magic trick straight out of 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' - manages to be audacious without feeling show-offy. If you're going to transfer a movie to the stage, this is exactly how to do it, by respecting both forms and then taking a sledgehammer to them. Let the pieces land thrillingly where they may.
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