The Front Page | Headline Hunting
Brustein reviews a 1987 revival of Hecht and
MacArthur’s play at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre
in New York. Finding that the play’s potent message
has endured, the critic offers a favorable review of
The Front Page.
Yet another revival of The Front Page, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s 1928 play about Chicago newspapermen covering an execution, would not appear to be a particularly original theatrical idea or an especially bold choice to open Gregory Mosher’s second season at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. The play has already enjoyed three movie versions—one of them macerating this hardnosed farce into a gender-reversed romantic comedy, with Rosalind Russell as a female Hildy Johnson and Cary Grant doing one of his incomparable comic turns as her editor-lover, Walter...
[The entire page is 1372 words long]
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