Nixon’s Nixon

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• Nixon’s Nixon
• A Conversation with Ed Gero and Conrad Feininger of Nixon’s Nixon
• by Joel Markowitz

By now, Ed Gero and Conrad Feininger are deeply familiar with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. They first played them in Nixon’s Nixon at Round House Theatre in 1999, and are reprising their spot-on portrayals, again for  Round House Theatre.

Joel Markowitz sat down with them to get their insights into the play and the men they so aptly embody every night. Ed says “They are rich, so full of life and theatrical…These are people we have all lived with for 30 years. And God bless them both. they have been very good to us!”

What’s different this time around?  For Ed – ” I’m noticing that Nixon is a character without a bottom..like a character out of Shakespeare. You just keep finding another layer, another layer..”

For Conrad, “It’s less funny than it was before because now we have lived through it in 2000., and it happens for real in the memories of people here. The world is less humorous than it was in 1999.”

Director Jerry Whiddon has put his stamp on the play. “Jerry Whiddon wanted Kissinger to be a lot lighter than he was last time..” Ed’s Nixon is still “on the ropes. He’s trying to get out of a maze that runs out of dead ends, almost manic depressive in a way- a real roller coaster emotional ride. ”

Find out where these actors turned for source materials, and how we as an audience have changed in the last 9 years.

For Ed and Conrad, Nixon’s Nixon is “like walking through a familiar attic and rummaging through memories. We get to look back in a political mirror to see where we have come as a nation… It’s a hopeful play for the times we are in, and a look forward to the next generation ..”

And for these actors who would love nothing better than to play these roles “anywhere on the planet”, doing the revival was “like we picked up where we left off 9 years ago, Like we never spent a day apart…”
Listen here.