Talk Radio

I saw Talk Radio on Broadway last week, with Liev Schreiber in the role of Barry Champlain, a fictional talk radio pioneer in the late 80s. The show was good, especially Schreiber, who deteriorates throughout the play, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol as he contemplates the sheer banality of his life's work and destroying every tenuous relationship he as with real human beings (as opposed to disembodied voices, with whom he seems to deal much easier). Talk radio is an ego-driven enterprise. Here, that ego is having a hell of a time justifying itself. Eric Bogosian's 1987 scrip is a bit dated, but you don't notice that at all once Schreiber sits down in that chair. It's fascinating to watch Schreiber take us on his trip through hell in one two-hour radio show.