Liev Schreiber Rocks My World

Today I finally left my computer. Three days of typing, of wracking my brain, and generally failing to produce anything approaching cogent thought. I threw in the towel, went to brunch, then hopped on the train and went downtown to see....

Liev Schreiber in Talk Radio. Wow. I've seen Liev Schreiber, and he's certainly dreamy, but he's always kind of hovered in my mind next to Billy Zane in the Phantom. Onstage, though, he was electrifying. The show is an hour and forty minutes long, and follows the on-air breakdown of shock jock Bobby Champlaine, one-time idealist, now tackling anti-Zionist nut jobs, drug addicts, and (worst of all) liberal do-gooders on his nightly radio program. The show asks a fairly hard-hitting question -- what do you do when you've been elected the voice of the people, and you have absolutely no interest in what they have to say? Schreiber delivers a blistering response apropo of Faust -- you elect yourself their god, and you turn up the mike.

Needless to say, Talk Radio is particularly relevant in the post-Imus era. Sitting through the hour and a half is brutal and fascinating at the same time -- as someone who's managed the call lines for two hour shows, it felt like I was watching Marc Steiner all over again, battling between two particularly obstinate guests (usually a pro-Palestinian and a Zionist) on a completely intractable issue. You know it's not going to be over in the next twenty-five minutes, but you're also aware that there's something magic - and not a little painful - transpiring inside the studio booth. Schreiber's radio magic is rougher, more cynical, and a good deal less polite, but it is intangibly there, and by the time the two hours are up, it's hard not to feel a little bit transformed.