Susan Granger’s review of “The Columnist” (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)
Anecdotal history can be fascinating – particularly in David Auburn’s play about Joseph Alsop (John Lithgow), one of Washington D.C.’s most influential, liberal journalists during the mid-20th century. A distant cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt’s, Alsop was hired at the age of 27 by The New York Herald Tribune, working as a syndicated columnist, often with his brother, Stewart (Boyd Gaines).
Fervently anti-Communist, Alsop not only supported the Vietnam War but also exhorted Presidents and politicians to make an all-out push for victory. That arrogant, intractable position earned him the enmity of New York Times reporter David Halberstam (Stephen Kunken), who accused him of being the most “imperial and imperious of American journalists,” noting that he’d drop by the United States Embassy in Saigon before being helicoptered around the war zones, conferring with military and diplomatic brass while enjoying fine wine and French food.
But the crux of Auburn’s character study begins long before that – in 1954, when, on a fact-finding visit to Moscow, Alsop was compromised in a homosexual liaison by a clever K.G.B. agent (Brian J. Smith) disguised as a tourist guide. Skip ahead to January 21, 1961, when Alsop was at the height of his glory, as President John F. Kennedy famously stopped by his Georgetown home for a very late nightcap after the last of his Inaugural Balls, much to the surprise and delight of Alsop’s platonic companion, Susan Mary Jay Patten (Margaret Colin) and her teenage daughter, Abigail (Grace Gummer). Although Alsop’s marriage-of-convenience to Susan lasted 17 years, their relationship ran its course, ending in bitterness and regret.
While director Daniel Sullivan weaves an episodic tapestry of political influence, revealing the seduction of self-importance, not unlike that of contemporary pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann, John Lithgow insightfully embodies the indignation of a righteous WASP amid the power Establishment. Conferring an understated sense of elegant reality on this Manhattan Theatre Club production are John Lee Beatty’s sets, lit by Kenneth Posner, and Jess Goldstein’s costumes.