Well, now that he's gone and won the Tony, you all may be in line to get your tickets to see Frank Langella. Oh, that I could dissuade you and point you to some other theatre.
Langella's Nixon is one of the most overblown creations I have seen on the stage. He has created a caricature of Nixon that is so far off the charts you need the safety of third or fourth balcony to escape being clubbed over the head with it.
Somewhere along the line in the rehearsal process for Frost/Nixon, someone whispered the word "simian" into Frank Langella's ear and he ran with it. Within the first few minutes of this play I was reminded of Prymate, which I saw a couple of years ago. In it, André De Shields plays the part of a domesticated ape. He does this on purpose, and, on the whole, wasn't too bad. In Frost/Nixon, Langella has decided to do the same thing, the problem being that the character he is playing happens to be a man.
When did Nixon become stoop shouldered and bent at the waist? Try never. Langella's Nixon is perpetually bent forward with the result that Nixon's head is always looking at the ground. Nixon was a man who lived in his head, which is probably why he was always bringing his shoulders up - it was a protective gesture. His head was the last thing he would have let bob like a statue in the rear window of a car. Langella's posture reminded me of the time I wore a long-waisted dress in a wedding. Being a short-waisted person, the only thing I could do was lift and tilt slightly from my hips. It left my arms swinging like a monkey, but the dress looked better.
It's such a mystery. When I have seen Langella interviewed he presents an imposing, sleek figure. But when he gets on stage he feels the urge to gild the preverbal lily to the point that all I saw was a fop imitating a fraud.
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