Broadway’s Network surpasses the film with a powerful performance by Bryan Cranston and an even more resonant message. Learn more in this Deeper Cut.
This column contains spoilers for the 2019 Broadway production of Network and the 1976 movie.
Network is the hottest ticket on Broadway right now, and with great reason. Bryan Cranston will almost certainly win another Tony Award for his performance, and that’s just the start of how this production is even better than the critically acclaimed film that inspired it.
It’s been almost 43 years since the film version of Network was released — a dark, scathing satire of the media machine, written by one legend (Paddy Chayefsky) and directed by another (Sidney Lumet). The film won four Oscars, so certainly it would seem ludicrous to even try and replicate it, right? Not so fast.
The original production does cast a long shadow. But film and stage are two very different mediums, and the duo behind the latter version — writer Lee Hall and director Ivo van Hove, who successfully launched the play at London’s National Theatre before bringing it to Broadway — have proven that the screen really didn’t do Howard Beale justice.
If you haven’t seen either yet, a quick primer: Howard is the nightly news anchor for UBS, its Peter Jennings or Dan Rather. He’s been around for decades, is highly respected, and works well with his boss and longtime friend, Max Schumacher. But underneath that veneer, he’s cracking. His wife has died sometime before, and when his ratings plummet, he loses the last thing that he has left. And so, he decides to commit suicide on the air — which is not even close to the worst of it.
Without giving away too many spoilers, Network indicts about a half-dozen different facets of the modern world, all of which are just as worthy of examination today as they were in 1976. There’s Howard’s dizzying spiral from old relic to unhinged prophet. There’s Diana Christensen, the young hotshot network executive who freely admits she can’t feel anything but a desire for ratings. And Max, who is frustratingly trapped between the two, wanting to feel something but also watching in horror as that something destroys his friend and everything he stands for.
To say more would be taking away from the uncompromising thrill ride that is Broadway’s version of Network. It’s too good, too smart, too startling—it deserves to be experienced without any sort of spoilers. But even if you’ve seen the movie, you don’t quite get it until you’ve seen the play.
The cast of Network on Broadway is superior to the film’s ensemble. That’s not to take anything away from the three acting Oscars the movie cast won (including Beatrice Straight’s infamous win as Best Supporting Actress for being on screen for five minutes and two seconds).
That’s because the Broadway cast is perfect for these roles; they feel like these were the parts they were born to portray, even though the three leads have Emmys, a Tony and plenty of critical acclaim between them. Cranston is joined by Scandal‘s Tony Goldwyn as Max and Orphan Black‘s Tatiana Maslany making her Broadway debut as Diana, and the trio create a perfect disharmony.
It’s well known that Bryan Cranston is one of the best actors of our generation. Of course he’s well loved for his portrayal of Walter White in Breaking Bad, but he’s also won a Tony for his version of President Lyndon Johnson in All The Way and delivered great work elsewhere, such as the episode of The X-Files that got him cast in Breaking Bad.
Playing Howard Beale requires an almost constant state of mania, and Cranston is unbelievable maintaining his intensity for the entire duration of the play. He’s emotional and unraveling in one scene, and delivering emphatic speeches that have the audience eating out of his hand in the next. He takes a tremendous amount of work onto his shoulders, but it’s all for very good reason; he is able to pull the audience into Howard’s journey.
With all the sound and fury that comes out of the character, it would be easy to get lost. But with Cranston, one never loses sight of the man underneath the monologues and how he got to be this way. He’s charming and witty, but also wounded and more than a little lost; he’s able to convey a sense that while Howard knows he’s being used, he also finds happiness and meaning through his newfound celebrity, too.
Howard’s mental health is discussed multiple times during Network, and Cranston lets us see as the pieces fall apart, then seemingly come back together—but in reality are just continuing to be broken. He’s a knowing participant in his own destruction.
Tony Goldwyn is one of the most criminally overlooked actors of this generation; he’s brilliant in so many roles, but has yet to get as much recognition as he deserves. His Network character has the same problem and then some. Max is supposed to be the voice of reason, but no one’s listening. At the same time, he worries that what’s happening to Howard could happen to him next.
It seems incongruous that Max would begin sleeping with Diana given that he hates everything she stands for, but Goldwyn does an excellent job at conveying how his character is vulnerable and tormented in his own ways. He has a wife and family, but leaves them for a woman who makes him feel like he’s someone to be looked up to. Yet he also faces the pain he causes them and the pain being caused by Howard’s runaway train of personality.
He’s so much more fleshed out than in the movie, someone whom the audience comes to care for and be angry with and also feel like they know him — because Goldwyn brings such warmth, and self-loathing, and bewilderment to the part. He makes Max a surrogate voice for the viewer while we all can do nothing but watch this trainwreck.
Anyone who watched Orphan Black knows that Tatiana Maslany has incredible versatility. She was an ensemble unto herself for multiple seasons, and should have won more than one Emmy. But as good as that show was, she’s even better in Network. Max describes Diana as being “a wasteland” and they both know it. She’s passionate, but only for her work and the cold, hard results it brings. She does such eyebrow-arching things throughout the play that if you just read the text, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was a cartoon villain.
That’s where Maslany makes all the difference. She’s asked to do things that most people would be flummoxed by, and she does them without hesitation. Despite that, Maslany shows us a woman who is self-aware of all those emotional deficiencies. She knows she’s not wired right, and there’s a small part of her that seems to wonder what life would be like if she was. But not enough to do anything about it.
And she represents everything that Network is warning us about. Not to mention, proves the truth hiding in the play: that everyone whose lives are consumed by this institution winds up broken.
Hall and van Hove lean into that with the technological advancements of 2019 as well as the platform of live theatre. The Network stage is constructed so the audience feels like they’re right in the heart of that media machine, with video monitors that are utilized throughout and a glass-walled newsroom allowing the audience to see everyone’s reactions. The play comments on how we are losing ourselves in our screens by surrounding us with them.
Actors warm up before the show on stage, and a limited number of theatergoers can purchase tickets that allow them to eat in the bar and restaurant used for several scenes in the play. Who’s an actor and who isn’t? Why is Cranston going out into the audience? Where does one part of the set end and another begin? Nothing is for sure and nothing is safe in Network.
Network intentionally blurs the lines between reality and media, and like an episode of The Twilight Zone, there’s that sinking feeling when you realize the disturbing world it’s created still exists outside the doors. It’s terrifyingly relevant and unbelievably breathtaking, and you’ll never look at theatre, or the media, or another person the same way again.
Network is now playing at New York’s Belasco Theatre until June 8. Find the next Deeper Cut every Wednesday in the Entertainment category at FanSided.