The Front Page

Synopsis

Set in the press room of the Chicago Criminal Court as one hack announces he's giving up, marrying and moving on - but then comes the scoop of his career when a murderer escapes just before execution. Originally produced 1928.

Our Review:

21 May 2002

Although Chicago, where The Front Page is set, may now be a tamer city, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's sharp 1928 comedy, with its cynical view of journalism and journalists, still resonates today.

In the United States, the first decade of the last century saw a literal war - waged with guns and lots of intimidation - between rival dailies, starting when William Randolph Hearst set up the Chicago American in 1900. Perhaps it's no accident then that in Douglas Wager's outstanding new production, Michael Pennington's Walter Burns, the hard nosed managing editor of the Examiner, is made up to bear an uncanny resemblance to Orson Welles' Hearst-inspired Citizen Kane.

Burns rules the roost in the pressroom of Chicago's criminal court building, where the assembled hacks are currently covering the imminent execution of Earl Williams, a young and idealistic leftist unjustly convicted of murdering a black Chicago cop. But while the others a...

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