Invictus Theatre’s “Network,” 2024, with Layke Fowler, James Turano/Photo: Aaron Reese Boseman Photography
RECOMMENDED
“Television … makes the apocalypse pleasurable.”
—Richard Stivers, “The Culture of Cynicism”
Theater is all about timing, and the gutsy and ambitious Invictus Theatre—founded and led by Charles Askenaizer, who also directs this Chicago premiere—has perfectly synchronized the opening of “Network” with the Democratic National Convention, taking place a few miles south. Based on the Paddy Chayefsky-written film from 1976, a blackly comedic, but ultimately dead-serious look at the TV news business, and adapted for the stage by British playwright Lee Hall, the show is a perfect dramatic counterpoint to our own silly season of political conventioneering.
One wonders—well, not really—what the central character of Howard Beale, the veteran television newscaster turned crackpot on-air prophet, would think of the media’s earnest attempt to portray the tightly scripted, hyper-policed, corporate-sponsored media event at the United Center as an expression of democracy and freedom at work. Beale would have us all leaning out our windows, venting our rage at the way the system perpetually plays us for fools, and shouting out the tagline that the movie imprinted in our consciousness: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Invictus Theatre’s “Network,” 2024, with Whitney Minarik, James Turano and John Chambers/Photo: Aaron Reese Boseman Photography
And that is why, dear reader, you should go see this smart, deeply felt, absorbing production of Chayefsky’s and Hall’s imperfect but potently provocative play. In our own era of Fox and Trump, of bald-faced lies as the accepted currency of politics and partisan propaganda as the driving purpose behind the “news,” Howard Beale–the voice of righteous indignation who heroically fails to transcend TV’s inherent crassness and triviality—speaks loudly and clearly to us. The Beale we see here, in the person of local actor and radio personality James Turano, is a mesmerizing figure, less operatic and more down-to-earth than the Peter Finch portrayal in the original movie. Turano manages to humanize the semi-deranged loose cannon that is Howard Beale, making his message about the dangers posed to the public by a media complex beholden to private interests all the more cogent and frightening.
The story is told through the eyes of Max Schumacher (Chuck Munro), a middle-aged news director who goes back to the glory days of Edward R. Murrow when TV still seemed to hold promise. A conventionally sane person, he serves as counterbalance to Beale’s gonzo iconoclasm and also as the moral center of the play—until he falls for the much younger Diana Christensen (Anne Trodden), a hard-bitten network programmer who can achieve orgasm only when visualizing expanding Nielsen ratings.
Invictus Theatre’s “Network,” 2024, with Ophelia Harkness/Photo: Aaron Reese Boseman Photography
Alas, as in the movie, Schumacher is basically a bore, haplessly tsk-tsking his way through the world while failing to contemplate his own contradictions. His nemesis is Frank Hackett, the corporate infighter who declares almost proudly to Schumacher, “We are not a respectable network–we are a whorehouse network.” Joe Sergio is all tense aggression as the gangsterish Hackett, who bests the placid Schumacher with such ease that their scenes together hardly even qualify as conflict.
Among the sixteen-person cast—a couple of whom need to work on their enunciation—Patrick Blashill stands out as Jensen, the CEO of the conglomerate that owns the network. Like a corner-office Pope, Blashill’s Jensen declaims from on high to the shell-shocked Beale about the deeper nature of the world not as a place of nations, governments and individuals, but rather as “one holistic system of systems, a multinational dominion of dollars.” Jensen is framed by set designer Kevin Rolfs’ lovely stained-glass backdrop, depicting a television set that glows with inner light.
Transfixed by his encounter with greatness, Beale becomes less angry and more tragically philosophical, explaining to his increasingly puzzled audience how cosmically insignificant they are within the indifferent arena of global capitalism. As in the movie, Beale’s rants—red-hot, unhinged yet brilliantly articulated—are the best thing in the show, thanks to Turano’s volcanic performance. Playgoers become the studio audience for the Howard Beale Show, enjoying his frenzied attacks on the forces that keep us behaving like sheep, while at the same time clapping and chanting mock-rebellious slogans on cue. It’s a strange, twisty, clarifying moment, one that can be experienced only in the theater.
Invictus Theatre’s “Network,” 2024, with James Turano/Photo: Aaron Reese Boseman Photography
Kudos to designer Rolfs for convincingly transporting us back to the mid-1970s, complete with Gerald Ford-era commercials and show snippets, a dose of nostalgia that will prove pleasantly distracting to viewers of a certain age. But this play is no sweet remembrance of things past. Hall’s clean adaptation brings out Chayefsky’s prescience, predicting twenty years before the advent of Fox News the crumbling of the boundary between news and commentary, information and entertainment, hard fact and wishful fiction. We see how, in a ratings-driven business, where success is always a matter of points, percentages and ad dollars, journalistic integrity is just another cost ripe for cutting.
There is an act of anticipated violence in the play. Director Askenaizer cannily emphasizes not the action itself, but rather the creepy lack of any response to it by the numbed studio technicians, who relate to their fellow human beings only as shadows on a screen. In this scene and others, we see TV for what it is, a false friend that transforms reality into generic, dumbed-down content, and human suffering into eye-catching, ratings-boosting spectacle.
This is what theater needs to be in our time: a mirror not just to nature but also to the media landscape that surrounds us. Invictus has crafted a memorable production of an important and illuminating play. And there is no better time to see it than right now.
Invictus Theatre Company’s “Network” at Windy City Playhouse, 3014 West Irving Park. Runs through September 29. Tickets are $25-$45 at invictustheatreco.com/network.
