Journalism - the activity - can make good fodder for the theater. Anyone who remembers The Front Page in its various incarnations will know what I mean: a serviceable blend of melodrama, sentimentality, and cynicism that is practically guaranteed to charm away an evening, relaxing the audience with excitement and laughter and leaving them thoroughly entertained.
Like The Front Page's coauthor Ben Hecht, Jeffrey Archer is a very successful writer; unlike him, Archer is not an ex-journalist. He came to writing by way of a political career and the exigencies of personal financial disaster; having authored his way out of bankruptcy and into a fortune, he now combines the vocations of politics and best-selling novelist and is featured on the best-seller shelves in train stations, airports, and bookshops everywhere. Lately he has taken to writing - or, more correctly, writing for the stage. His first play, a courtroom drama (which I did not see), had a moderate success in London's West End. His second, Exclusive, opened last autumn at London's Strand Theatre. For it, Archer uses the setting of a busy newspaper office and tries a new version of the recipe used with such flair and skill by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. The ingredients of melodrama, sentimentality, and cynicism are present in Mr. Archer's theatrical soufflé, but they do not make it rise.
Diligent Study
This is not for lack of effort and resources. Before writing Exclusive, Archer dutifully undertook a course of homework, haunting the offices of London papers like the Independent and the Sunday Times, gathering anecdotal material and know-how and trying to acquire a sense of how contemporary reporters and editors go about their business. Once his script was finished, he was able to secure the services of some of the finest actors on the English stage: Paul Scofield as Nicholas Berkeley, the tyrannical editor of the Chronicle; Eileen Atkins to play Sally, his decent but tough secretary; and Alec McCowen as Harry Rivers, and aging star reporter. Stephen Pacey is Vincent, the unscrupulous young aspirant to Harry's throne. A phalanx of secondary players, especially Jeffry Wickham as an assistant editor, provides excellent support.
Timothy O'Brien's set is quite stunning: a two-level high-tech office in white, complete with many VDT terminals, functioning telephones, and a central open-plan tower that contains the editor's office. This is placed on a revolve-within-revolve stage to provide variety from scene to scene. The central plot has to do with the Chronicle's race against its rival, the Graphic, for an exclusive story on mystery figure called The Fox who sets fire to tax offices. This contest involves Harry and young Vincent in personal rivalry, worked out through subplot in which Vincent, apparently about to uncover The Fox, defects to the Graphic. But good old Harry is able to outwit him and keeps the scoop for the Chronicle. Alas, just as he phones in his touching story about a sweet old lady who has been taking revenge on incompetent tax inspectors, Britain's prime minister resigns, and Harry is swept off the front page after all. Woven through and around all this are several running-joke stories hinging on different departments of the Chronicle: odd letters to the editor, the trials of a gossip columnist, and the attempts of the financial editor to keep up to date with the latest crisis.
As stories go, Exclusive is not bad if rather hackneyed;
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