Culcha

Last week I saw a revival of Eric Bogosian's Talk Radio with Liev Schreiber playing late-night talk show host Barry Champlain. Schreiber did a great job, but I think the play doesn't pack quite the punch it must have in 1987, mostly because of the callers who phone in Champlain's show.

There are depressed callers and crazy callers and boring callers and druggy callers and creepy, threatening anti-semitic callers. The play was first produced in 1987, the year the Fairness Doctrine was crushed to pave the way for the explosive growth of wingnut radio. In 1987, the callers were the nuts on the radio. Twenty years later, it's the hosts who are nuts. It's the guests who are nuts. And it's the people those radio (and TV) hosts and guests (and their networks) helped to install in the White House who are nuts.

The nuts who call Barry Champlain seemed quaint by comparison.

There are a couple of great rants in "Talk Radio," though. Here are two:

"I'm here to lead you by the hand through the dark forest of your own hatred and anger and humiliation. You're afraid of the bogeyman, but you can't live without him."

and

"Everything's screwed up and you like it that way, don't you? You're fascinated by the gory details. You're mesmerized by your own fear! You revel in floods and car accidents and unstoppable diseases. You're happiest when others are in pain! And that's where I come in, isn't it."

The revival opens tonight.