Checkers
The thing about history plays is that we all already know what happens. There can be no M. Night Shyamalan plot twist. So the journey needs to be dynamic and engaging. The psychic insight needs to be penetrating. The characters need to be charismatic. Richard Nixon and his story are none of those things. In Checkers , a new play by Douglas McGrath and directed at the Vineyard Theatre by Terry Kinney, what we “learn” about Nixon (as the story – told through flashbacks – shows us what led up to the famous “Checkers” speech) is that he is paranoid and always feeling like an outsider. But we already knew that. This play – both its texts and performances – doesn’t reveal anything new or of interest. (And for what it’s worth, the final moments of the play were aggressive and incongruous with the tone of the rest of the play. They were almost violent and made Nixon look like a monster. Agree or disagree with his politics and CREEP-related actions, but he was not a monster.) The...