The Best Man

Director Nick Alcott and his cast create an adrenaline-charged pace in Gore Vidal's 1960 political drama (revived in 2000) about the backstage maneuvering of a presidential convention. On- and off-the-record conversations unfold quickly and meaningfully as candidate Bill Russell (Fred Thompson) seeks to win his party's nomination without surrendering his self-respect. The play, even after 44 years, is a smart little gem, and the performance effectively captures its various moods, moving smoothly between satire and drama and always skewering the national habit of instinctive dissembling. The only intermittent weakness is Fred Thompson, who sounds a bit lifeless in some important scenes, but the ensemble acting is consistently fine. G.H. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine