[In the following review, which was originally published in Daily News on May 29, 1987, Kissel asserts that “Talk Radio is directed and performed with the special energy of people who know they're doing something hot.”]

One reason people are nostalgic for early radio is that it was soothing. The announcers' voices were robust, their tone sometimes stern, sometimes jolly, but invariably reassuring in a fatherly way.

In the wake of the '60s any kind of paternalism was suspect. Radio reflected that. The new radio voices were gruff and aggressive. Even if the voice was mature, it was that of a nasty kid, not a wise and kindly father.

In his stunning Talk Radio, Eric Bogosian, his voice as rough and tangy as cheap Scotch, plays Barry Champlain, a Cleveland talk-show host with a taunting, preachy, inflammable style.

Champlain's callers are a recognizable sampling of what you're likely to hear on late-night radio: the angry, the lonely, the crackpots. Sometimes Champlain coddles them; often he assaults them. “You listen to this show because you feel superior to the other losers who listen,” he tells one.

It is a veritable circus of neurosis, with the ringmaster occasionally displaying his own raw nerves in the center ring. In the interplay of jangling voices, his is the harshest. “People have asked me if I'm going to soften my touch,” he tells his listeners, announcing the show is about to go nationwide. “This decadent country needs a loud voice, and that's me.”

Champlain, one senses, is not really a moralist but someone who knows how to merchandise outrage. In an anarchic time the bewildered feed on it, and he has a corner on the market.

Bogosian, his body tense, his eyes as brooding as a sideshow charlatan's, is a riveting performer, able to mesmerize us even when the material becomes repetitive. One of his strongest scenes is a confrontation with a stoned kid who comes into the studio. It is like Scrooge's visit from the Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come: The boy, superbly played by Michael Wincott, is mindless and hostile, his head filled only with media bilge like Champlain's.

There are equally incisive performances by John C. McGinley as a woebegone assistant who admires Champlain, Robyn Peterson as his Girl Friday, and Mark Metcalf as his slick producer. The offstage voices of the callers are splendidly done.

The set is stark and effective, though slides that comment on the action seem superfluous. Talk Radio is directed and performed with the special energy of people who know they're doing something hot.