Kelan Smith, Mark David Kaplan, Joe Dempsey, Guy Van Swearingen, Kate Fry in Northlight Theatre’s “The Front Page”/Photo: Michael Brosilow
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Stacks of old editions and a smattering of posters and mementos greet the audience on the set of Northlight Theatre’s “The Front Page.” A perfectly dingy press room in the bowels of the courthouse in Chicago, designed by Jeffrey D. Kmiec, is the shared office for a group of gruff court reporters. You can practically smell the cigar smoke clinging to the walls. Playing poker and shooting the breeze, the reporters are killing time as they await the early morning hanging of Earl Williams. Williams is a purported Communist who killed a Black police officer. Beyond the headlines, word on the street is that fellow reporter Hildy Johnson is leaving the biz for marriage. Little do the reporters know how big the city’s big story will be.
Even in its world premiere adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher, it’s clear that the nearly one hundred-year-old play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur was written by a pair of journos. The classic play is rife with grumbly, sardonic reporters who clearly love what they do but come to the gruesome bits with a deep sense of much-needed dissociation. They’ll clamor over each other for the scoop, eager for that front-page byline. It’s a trophy, of sorts. It’s a game this former city beat reporter knows quite well, the dissociation not so much—hence the “former” city beat reporter.
Northlight Theatre’s “The Front Page,” with John Lister and William Dick/Photo: Michael Brosilow
In the middle of it all is a new character treatment that makes the whole show infinitely more interesting and relatable for modern audiences—Hildy Johnson. Played by a wily Kate Fry, Hildy is a female reporter in an industry where (at the time, and often even now) men are at the forefront. She hasn’t been relegated to a softer beat, however; she’s covering the same gnarly material as her male counterparts. In many ways, Hatcher’s Hildy is a pioneer. “The Front Page” becomes a little less about the story at hand and more about the one who is writing it in an age when women were far from welcome. She’s embraced by her colleagues from other papers, not put apart from them. When you read between the lines, this adaptation is a rarely seen treatment of twentieth century women in a male-dominated industry.
Actually, the interactions with Hildy and several characters are changed dramatically because of this alteration. We see sides of characters we would not otherwise see in Hecht and MacArthur’s original text. Without spoiling anything, there is a softness that emerges for some of the more grizzled personas and characterizations, completely different from their original intention. As much as we’d like to think interactions aren’t gendered, from the play’s setting a hundred years ago to now, it simply isn’t true. So the subtle and overt moments in the play loom large for a Chicago audience today.
Northlight Theatre’s “The Front Page,” with Rae Gray and cast/Photo: Michael Brosilow
This comedy is nothing without its players, and under the direction of artistic director BJ Jones, the whole ensemble is a marvel. Joe Dempsey, Guy Van Swearingen and Kelan M. Smith (as McCue, Endicott and Kruger respectively) are the ideal, wry trio of typical reporters on the beat. They’re always giving each other the business but ready to hit the trail running. Whereas Mark David Kaplan’s tidy Bensinger, reminiscent of a more amiable Felix a la “The Odd Couple,” is the reporter I’d much rather share a desk with.
There aren’t enough words to credit every cast member as much as they deserve or to name how many times John Drea’s Earl Williams or Tim Kazurinsky’s Pincus had me holding back laughter. “The Front Page” is a hilarious, poignant reminder of the realities of journalism and the lengths we are willing to go to get a story. It is a whirlwind delight even in an age of nonstop news cycles—and you can print that!
“The Front Page” at Northlight Theatre, 1012 Church Street, Evanston, through October 25.
