Penn Presents at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts brings engaging production of Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers

Theater: Penn Presents
Show Title: Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers
Opened: February 14, 2008
Seen: February 15, 2008
Reviewer: Ryan Bunch
Submitted: February 16, 2008

If it sounds as much like the title of a newspaper or journal article as the title of a play it’s no surprise. Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, currently on view at the Annenberg Center’s Harold Prince Theater, is a play by journalists, and it shows—for better or worse, but overwhelmingly for better.

Written by Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons and produced by L.A. Theatre Works, Top Secret was initially presented on NPR in the early 1990s with an all-star cast. It is an account of the Washington Post’s decision in 1971 to pick up on a project, begun by the New York Times and suppressed by the Nixon administration, to publish the contents of a years-old top secret internal government document detailing the United States’ early involvement in Vietnam. Using transcripts of taped conversations and the trial that followed, Top Secret presents a dramatic confrontation between the press and the executive branch over the First Amendment and issues of national security.

The production now on view at Penn is part of a national tour of colleges and universities. Given its origins, Top Secret is a radio play and is presented as such, with a bare stage, a Foley artist and actors reading from copies of the script. Performances are accompanied by pre-show lectures and post-show discussions with the creators and the cast, which includes Susan Sullivan as legendary Washington Post publisher Catherine Grahame, John Heard as Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, Gregory Harrison as the Post’s attorney Brian Kelly, Tom Virtue as Richard Nixon and Peter Van Norden as Henry Kissinger and Fritz Beebe.

Top Secret is at its best when it stays close to its journalistic and academic roots, drawing directly on the inherent drama of the transcripts, the characters and the conversations among the players that can be inferred from the interviews and the historical record. This approach is especially absorbing in the discussions over journalistic imperative and civic responsibility leading up to publication among Catherine Grahame, Ben Bradlee and other members of the Post’s journalistic staff and legal counsel. The same is true of the courtroom scene in the second act in which Post attorney Brian Kelly goes toe to toe against the legal forces of the federal government.

Top Secret is good theater in that it is engaging and thought provoking. It’s real strength, though , is as documentary political history. It wisely plays to this strength for the most part. Comic relief in this intensely policy-driven narrative is infrequent and mild. More theatrically oriented writers might have punched things up with more deliberate and extensive use of humor, but it would have been to the detriment of a piece like this. The cast is made up of Hollywood professionals, who naturally do a professional job, but this is really a play more of ideas than of great performances.

When Top Secret does take stabs at theatrical gestures the results are less admirable. The use of an onstage Foley artist might be a nice gimmick, but it is distracting about twice as often as it is effective. A couple of somewhat ham-handed speeches come in near the end to make sure we’ve gotten our civics lesson (although in the post-performance discussion a rather predominantly civic-minded audience seemed to appreciate the content of those speeches in spite of what I saw as their dramatic clumsiness). And I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the choice of recorded sound elements as the actors strike their final grandiose pose.

Taken on its own terms, though, Top Secret is an engrossing exploration of an important moment in history with striking parallels to our own time. Anyone with an interest in matters related to government and politics is sure to be engaged and entertained by this show.

Top Secret runs through February 17 at the Harold Prince Theatre of the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Call 215-898-3900 or visit PennPresents.org.

Ryan Bunch is a vocal instructor, writer and composer specializing in musical theater and theater for young audiences. He has provided voice training, musical direction, songwriting, script development and educational services for the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Mainstage Center for the Arts, Center Stage Productions, Chichester School District, West Chester Summer Stage, Renaissance Artist Puppet Company, and the Players Board of Chestnut Hill Academy and Springside School. For additional information visit www.ryanbunch.com.