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Eric Bogosian’s ‘Talk Radio’ lives or dies depending on who’s playing the lead role of shock jock Barry Champlain. Luckily, the play’s in safe hands with Matthew Jure in Sean Turner’s revival at the Old Red Lion, 30 years after it premiered in the US.
With references to George Bush Sr and the Iran-Contra scandal thrown around like expletives by Champlain, ‘Talk Radio’ is as ’80s as a Coca-Cola ad. But its scathing portrait of a navel-gazing American populace calling into a late-night radio show to vent their prejudices and paranoia could be the Twitter platform today.
Bogosian’s script is as dazzled by itself as Champlain is by his own voice. The poison-penned dialogue given to the slew of callers who suck up to, threaten or cajole Champlain is caustically funny. But a paper-thin plot – this is the last night before Champlain’s Cleveland-area show goes national – furiously spins its wheels.
Turner conjures a believably scuzzy world out of designer Max Dorey’s ‘Playboy’-perfect, period-detailed set and Dan Bottomley’s studio sound design. Molly McNerney, Andy Secombe and George Turvey do good work with some sketchily drawn supporting characters.
But it’s all scaffolding for something that ‘star vehicle’ could have been coined for. It’s no surprise that Bogosian also played Champlain in the New York debut of ‘Talk Radio’ off-Broadway. He’s an extraordinary invention, a motormouth spewing disgust as he rips apart the callers who elevate him to god-like status.
Jure (compelling in spite of a dodgy wig) brings a manic, increasingly desperate energy to the coke-snorting, alcoholic Champlain, horrified by the witless drivel drooled by high-as-a-kite teenager Kent (in a cringingly funny turn by actor and real-life Radio 1 DJ Ceallach Spellman). All he has created is a cult of personality.