Best Theater Ever! FROST/NIXON

Okay, maybe that's overstating things, but I did get to see the new British stage import, Frost/Nixon last night, and it's one of the most enjoyable shows I've seen in a long time. It's very smart, very wry and funny, and brilliantly acted. And it's 70s-tastic! Plus you might even learn something watching it... And yep, it's scoring really good reviews all over.

More on this shag-a-delic production after the jump!

Okay, this may not look like riveting theater, but it totally is!

The premise may sound super-dry: The play, Frost/Nixon, is a behind-the-scenes tale of how the famous 1974 interview between playboy-ish British TV talk show host David Frost and disgraced U.S. President Richard Nixon came to be, and how it all went down. But the show is rollicking good ride that's suspenseful, juicy, funny and serves up some lesson of politics and U.S. history in a sly package. Really!

Playing the charmingly rakish Frost is Michael Sheen, who you probably saw channeling Tony Blair in The Queen (which was also written by Frost/Nixon's killer playwright Peter Morgan), and who also played a super-fey gay dandy in the 2003 film Bright Young Things. He's fantastically good. His Frost is exuberantly ambitious, somewhat adolescent in his world view, and looks great striding around with wavy hair, garish period drag and a smirky grin. Playing opposite him is acting behemoth Frank Langella, who delivers a winning, enticing, brutish and languidly scurrilous Richard Nixon. He's a relic and a casualty of clumsy politics and unskilled scheming; a dinosaur who's still got a twinkle in his eye as he slogs through the tar pits of his own political and cultural demise.

Michael Sheen as David Frost; Frank Langella has a hunch about Nixon.

Evidently, there are some dishy Broadway rumors that Langella and Sheen have an avid rivalry offstage, befitting their onstage alter-egos. Meow!

I love the '70s newsmen fashion. Watergate is the new black!

Plus, the set is beautiful and spare, you'll love the use of video (there's a wall of TV screens towering over center stage, and they compliment the action instead of overpowering it), the sound design is tight and emphatic. But enough... Just check it out. And no, there's no gay specific content going on here (though a running joke about "effeminate"-looking Italian loafers is well-used), but just splendid theater. And your parents will dig it, too.