Much ink has been spilled about Rupert Murdoch, the Australian born media mogul who at 94 remains an influential force in politics and society as both a hero to the right and a bogeyman to the left. Murdoch: The Final Interview, a new one-man skewering of the man that opened at Theater555 on Sunday, doesn’t disguise its antipathy for its subject — who’s depicted as a doddering codger submitting to a final interview with a sprightly journalist named “Chodrum Trepur.” That’s Rupert Murdoch backwards (or nearly so) and underscores what passes for wit in this antic exercise in meta-theatricality.
Jamie Jackson turns in his swivel chair to play both sides of the interrogation — and then also adds a stutter to portray Rupert’s wealthy newspaperman father, Keith, or a faint falsetto as the mother who tossed him into a pool to teach him to swim. The versatile, hard-working Jackson essays more roles as the evening progresses, including an unconvincing, poorly wigged John F. Kennedy (in one of many video projections by Andy Evan Cohen) and a bizarrely badgering version of former Fox News chief Roger Ailes whose flat Midwestern speaking voice is rendered as if he were a loud-mouth New Yawker.
The script, by an unidentified author coyly called “an Unnamed Source,” skims the surface of Murdoch’s life story, cherry-picking details that will expose the man’s hypocrisy and avarice. We learn that he once advocated for broad media ownership and “a variety of viewpoints,” for instance, and that he had a brief fling with left-wing politics while at Oxford University — the latter mostly as an act of rebellion against his distant, attention-withholding dad. More than once, Jackson climbs the scaffolding that frames the stage (designed by Peter R. Feuchtwanger), extends his arm, and cries out, “Father, I’m up here! Look at me!” This sort of pop psychologizing continues throughout the show, which prefers to skim the surface of both fact and motivation.
The show glances at key moments in Murdoch’s rise: the lobbying of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton for legislative and bureaucratic victories that allowed him to expand his empire, the phone-hacking scandal that threatened to dismantle it, the initial hard line taken against “fucking idiot” Donald Trump that quickly collapsed amid the MAGA threat to Fox News’ supremacy. There’s an even an up-to-the-moment reference to the recent settlement in the family’s succession drama which “dissolved the family trust, chosen one heir, severed ties with three and bought off two.” Tellingly, the interviewer “Chodrum” follows that explanation with the pointed question: “What does it mean to be a father?”
But no sooner does the play stumble on an interesting idea than it veers off in a madcap bit of stage business under Christopher Scott’s direction, introducing everyone from Dr. Frankenstein to the laissez-faire economist Frederick Hayek to Singing Detective creator Dennis Potter. At one point, Jackson even brings out a metal bucket marked “shit” and later smears his face with its contents. This is the best that Murdoch can offer in terms of a public reckoning, turning its subject into a cartoon villain whose latest scheme blows up on him. If you hate Murdoch, and you hate how his businesses have degraded journalism standards and the body politic, this show may provide very cheap thrills. But it’s ultimately unsatisfying to degrade a conservative bogeyman without indicting him and his beliefs in any substantive way. This is a hatchet job with a very dull blade. ★☆☆☆☆
MURDOCH: THE FINAL INTERVIEW
Theater555, Off Broadway
Running time: 90 minutes (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through December 28 for $49 to $79
Culture Sauce 