Vancouver actor Ari Cohen stars as American author Jim Reston in the Canadian Stage Company’s production of Frost/Nixon.
Nominated for three Tony Awards and the winner of one, Frost/Nixon was written by the British author Peter Morgan, who wrote the screenplays for The Last King of Scotland and The Queen.
Frost/Nixon is a dramatization of a series of televised interviews that took place between disgraced U.S. president Richard Nixon and celebrity/playboy, British TV talk-show host David Frost in 1977. It was Nixon’s first interviews after the 1974 Watergate scandal that forced his resignation from office. Frost solicited an admission of guilt from the former president, and 45 million TV viewers witnessed it.
Frost/Nixon is “an engaging, thrilling, fast-moving piece of theatre,” Cohen says. “It is a meditation on politics and media – it has something to say about the power of the media and image that these days have a lot more prominence than ideas.
“Nixon was convicted in the eyes of public opinion through this media, in a way that the justice system in the United States had sort of failed. He first escaped conviction by resignation, and then, when pardoned by[former U.S. president] Gerald Ford, was then relieved of any responsibility for these crimes. It was an extraordinary moment in media history.”
Jim Reston is both the narrator and a character in the play. In real life, he was the author of the book The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interview.
“He was one of the main researchers for David Frost, in preparing the interviews with Richard Nixon,” Cohen says. “A big part of how this play came about was [that] he chronicled the interviews while they were going on.
“Peter Morgan had seen an interview with Reston and contacted him. Reston took out the manuscript he hadn’t looked at in 30 years and passed it along to Morgan. Morgan then wrote the play, essentially based on that manuscript… and then Reston published the manuscript as The Conviction of Richard Nixon.”
Frost/Nixon premièred at the Donmar Warehouse in London, England, in 2006 before moving to Broadway in 2007. Cohen played Reston in Vancouver, where Frost/Nixon’s run at the Vancouver Playhouse recently ended.
“Reston narrates the story, sets up the framework and fills in background information about Nixon and what was happening in American politics at the time,” Cohen says. “It is a vast, complicated story. Reston is there to simplify the events. At one point, Reston asserts himself into the story and the rest of the play. Although he is still narrating, he is a participant as a researcher for David Frost.
“It is an interesting challenge to go in and out of the play and be communicating with the audience, and then drop in and play a scene with a few of the characters. It is certainly something I’ve never done before. I’m enjoying the experience of helping the audience through the story.”
Cohen says that playwright Morgan wants theatregoers to first and foremost enjoy a satisfying, entertaining evening of theatre. Cohen said Morgan thinks the play has great resonance today, in light of the current administration in the United States, and would like audiences to be aware of the parallel.
A television, film and stage actor, Cohen has strong ties to the Jewish community in Winnipeg, where he was born and where some of the members of his family still live, but has been based in Vancouver for four years. He lives there with his actress wife, Lisa Ryder, and their two children, Talia, 3, and Daniel, 1.
Cohen’s stage credits include his recent Jessie Award-nominated role in Noises Off in Vancouver and Toronto performances in Adam Pettle’s Sunday Father and in actor-playwright Michael Healey’s last two plays, Generous and Rune Arlidge, at the Tarragon Theatre. Healey also happens to be acting in Frost/Nixon.
Cohen has a recurring television role playing Reagan on Smallville. He had a part in The Tracey Fragments, a Bruce McDonald movie starring Ellen Page, which was filmed in Toronto last year.
Frost/Nixon runs until Nov. 8 at CanStage’s Bluma Appel Theatre, 27 Front St. E. For tickets, call 416-368-3110; Ticketmaster, 416-872-1111; or visit www.canstage.com.
