Radio play broadcasts issues of modern journalism

Radio plays are a rare breed in the “classy” stratosphere that is the New York theater scene, a fact that makes the New York Theater Workshop’s current production of “Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers” all the more unique.

For students not familiar with the fairly old medium, radio plays were originally conceived as just that—plays recorded for national broadcasting over the radio. Usually, these would be one-night only events with big stars lending their voices to classic theatrical fare. With “Top Secret,” however, director John Rubinstein decided to adopt the radio play structure to the entire run of the play. Though it’s fascinating to watch members of the universally talented cast create the sound effects for every prop at a booth located at the back of the stage, the sight causes inadvertent laughter in the middle of a less than humorous story.

In 1971, at the peak of the Vietnam protests, Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers—a 4,000-page document tracing the lead-up to the Vietnam War dating back to 1945—to the New York Times. The newspaper subsequently published the contents in multiple articles, causing the United States government to obtain a federal court injunction that forced the Times to stop the presses. Simultaneously, the Washington Post got its hands on a copy of the papers and immediately started publishing articles regarding their new acquisition after the Times stopped, culminating in a huge Supreme Court case with the U.S. government against the two newspapers.

“Top Secret” focuses on the Washington Post’s involvement in the debacle, and though the actors imbue their many characters with recognizable personalities, the play is a tad flat. Though the inherently riveting nature of the story almost compensates for this lack of theatrical drama, the production should have followed the lead of historical dramas such as “Frost/Nixon” and the upcoming “Enron” by infusing the proceedings with such vibrant energy. In historical dramas, the most important element is escaping the audience’s knowledge of the events and capturing them in the rollercoaster-esque stories. Instead, “Top Secret” feels as if the ending is predetermined and the cast is just going through the motions.

Despite the flaws in the production, the issues raised are worth the $20 student admission price, though another theatrical offering this season, “Time Stands Still,” probably has much more to say regarding modern journalism than “Top Secret.”

In a post-show discussion hosted over spring break by the Columbia Journalism Review—featuring the head of the Journalism School and Daniel Ellsberg himself—panelists found a plethora of connections between the Pentagon Papers’ description of the build-up to the Vietnam War and America’s invasion into Afghanistan and Iraq. Almost 40 years after the events of the play, Ellsberg said America still needs “an entire overhaul of the secrecy system.”