Head to head; Frank Langella and Michael Sheen take off the gloves in Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon, which arrives on Broadway this month, writes Adam Green.

Byline: Adam Green

With his beady eyes, sweaty upper lip, and perpetual five-o'clock shadow, Richard Nixon may have been the least telegenic American politician. In a cringe-making succession of on-air fiascos-from the Kennedy debate to the "I am not a crook" press conference-Nixon set the gold standard for awkwardness, insincerity, and lack of sex appeal. This month, New York audiences can relive one of his final acts of public hara-kiri as Peter Morgan's wildly entertaining London smash, Frost/Nixon, opens on Broadway. The Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Queen and The Last King of Scotland, Morgan is the go-to guy for capturing public figures in private imbroglios. With Frost/Nixon, his first play, he turns to the backstage drama surrounding the British talk-show host David Frost's 1977 interviews with the former president. In Michael Grandage's sleek, fast-paced production, this brief chapter in broadcast history becomes a riveting, gloves-off bout between two ex-champions: a cocky stick-and-jab man on a downward ratings spiral and a brooding master of evasion in disgraced exile. "Individually, they're intriguing characters, and as a cocktail they're almost irresistible," Morgan says. "Both men are addicted, of course, to power, and both are using the interviews as a way back, but only one of them can win. It just had combat written all over it." As Nixon, the superb Frank Langella invests the late president with a kind of blundering majesty. Known for playing larger-than-life figures with elan (his 1979 turn as Count Dracula comes to mind), Langella was initially wary of taking on the role. "He's so imploded, so internal, so withheld-so untheatrical," he says. "And I tend to be, well, very theatrical." Langella found a connection to Nixon, though, while researching his life. He learned, for instance, that Nixon won over his future wife, Pat, by _driving her to her dates with other guys, and that he spent most evenings alone, drinking scotch and listening to the sound track of Victory at Sea. Langella says, "I began to feel very compassionate toward him-moved by his loneliness and torment and impressed by his tenacity." Without falling back on mimicry, Langella manages to capture Nixon's discomfort in his own skin-the crabbed ...