Playwright: Aaron Sorkin. At: TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington. Tickets: 773-281-8463; www.timelinetheatre.com; $25-$35 Runs through: June 13
Aaron Sorkin has the Right Stuff to create dazzling popular drama for TV (The West Wing) and stage (A Few Good Men), not unlike Peter Shaffer (Amadeus, Equus) or Alan Bennett (The Madness of George III, The History Boys). He’s not as intellectual as either but, like them, he astutely blends showmanship, history and ideas. Sorkin succeeds again with The Farnsworth Invention, a crackling-good play served con brio by TimeLine (sic) Theatre Company.
Ironically or appropriately, Sorkin uses legitimate theater to chronicle the early history of theater’s great enemy, television, invented in the 1920s by Utah-born Philo Farnsworth (1906-1971), an instinctively brilliant engineer with little formal education. Scientific history credits Farnsworth, but business history credits Russian Jewish immigrant David Sarnoff (1891-1971) who, by 1928, was president of RCA and founder of its subsidiary, NBC. Sarnoff invested millions to develop commercial TV (and radio) and contest patents with Farnsworth. The iconic trademarks of RCA and NBC tell you who came out on top.
One can parse Sorkin’s play many ways—Easterner (Sarnoff) vs. Westerner, ambitious immigrant vs. American frontiersman, innovation (Farnsworth) vs. exploitation (Sarnoff), even Mormon vs. Jew—but truth be told, both Farnsworth and Sarnoff were among a handful of 1920s visionaries, mostly scientists, who grasped the potential of television (Farnsworth’s word, meaning “viewed from afar”). They also were polar opposites in personality, cultural identification and—some would say—integrity. “The ends do justify the means. That’s what means are for,” Sorkin has Sarnoff say. But Sarnoff is the play’s narrator as well as TV’s victor, so Sarnoff writes the history.
Directed by masterful Nick Bowling, the TimeLine production is as swift-moving as a theatergoer—or even Sorkin himself—might wish, fluidly flowing over John Culbert’s alley scenic design (meaning a long and narrow stage with audience along two sides). A balcony level and several opaque doors are skillfully used and dramatically lit (by Keith Parham), and props designer Emilie Guthrie has convincingly recreated early, unwieldy experimental TV equipment. Sorkin’s dialogue makes the scientific talk interesting and the play of personalities suspenseful, but his entirely unnecessary use of four-letter words rings false for 1920s diction. Also, a fictional meeting between Farnsworth and Sarnoff is dramatically necessary but preachy.
The 16-person ensemble—most playing multiple roles—meets TimeLine’s usual high standards, anchored by Rob Fagin as Farnsworth and Pj Powers as Sarnoff, bravura roles of contrasting temperaments. Farnsworth provides Fagin with a role to put the youthful veteran firmly on Chicago’s theater map, that of an idealistic crusader (think Gary Cooper), appealing but idiosyncratic. On the other hand, the forceful and egotistical Sarnoff seems tailor-made for Powers’s verbal dexterity and ingratiating charm. Like so many executives, Sarnoff could smile while stabbing you, and Powers puts that across.
Skip TV to see this one.