Good Night, Oscar review – Sean Hayes brings panache to tense talkshow encounter

Barbican, London Will & Grace star reprises his Tony award-winning role as Oscar Levant in Doug Wright’s play about a ratings-crucial TV interviewThere is a small set of stage plays in which the younger, upstart medium of television is the hero: Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon, James Graham’s Best of Enemies and Aaron Sorkin’s The Farnsworth Invention. This genre is swelled by Doug Wright’s Good Night, Oscar, a 2024 Broadway success now transferring, with some English cast substitutions, to London. In common with the Morgan and Graham dramas, it is set around a notable television interview.The early realisation in TV that millions of viewers would happily sit on sofas to watch celebrities chatting on chairs meant that the role of talkshow host – Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, David Frost, Michael Parkinson – soon evolved a breed of alpha guests: Peter Ustinov, Kenneth Williams, Robin Williams and, in America, Oscar Levant, a classical pianist and movie supporting actor (An American in Paris) who became a waspish and risque late-night anecdotalist. Continue reading...

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