If I had to pick one play for a small, local theater to produce out of the current public consciousness, it would be Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon. Aside from the bevy of awards and the recent film, the subject matter seems as relevant today, in our atmosphere of ethics violations and rampaging sentiment against any sitting politician, as at any time since the actual interviews of Richard Nixon by David Frost in 1977.

Tacoma Little Theatre's production of Frost/Nixon is suitably sparse. As with the interviews themselves, the centerpiece throughout the bulk of the show is simply a pair of chairs set up for a television interview. In lieu of a backdrop there is a series of screens which project, in turns, actual news clips and a live feed of the interview conducted on stage.

On the one hand, these projections give us a view of what Gabe McClelland's Jim Reston, a Frost advisor, refers to as "the awesome power of the close-up." As with the interviews themselves, the power of Nixon's final confession come largely from the tightly framed image of his face as he stammers and sweats through a flustered apology.

On the other hand, the main projection comes in from the rear of the stage, and the very visible and extraordinarily distracting light bulb of the projector makes a true appreciation of this image nigh impossible.

The staging of the play is rife with other distractions as well. In certain scenes television cameras seem to have been staged to portray the claustrophobic nature of media scrutiny, but serve instead to block the audience's view of the action and muffle the sound of the speaker.

None of this is quite as distracting, however, as James Gilletti's ongoing struggle with the voice and demeanor of David Frost. Gilletti's voice dances around a hodgepodge of moderately English-sounding accents, none of them bearing much resemblance to Frost himself

Gilletti is outplayed at every turn by Steve Tarry's Richard Nixon. Interestingly, in some ways Tarry's Nixon is an exaggeration of the real man. Elements of the Nixon seen in impressions, performances and the few most famous sound bites, only subtly on display in the interview tapes themselves, play through Tarry's performance. However, it seems that at this point, there is no other way to play a recognizable Richard Nixon than the overwrought image best known to younger generations.

In the play, as in life, the most affecting moment comes near the end, as a tired, worn down and beaten Nixon confesses, not to any impeachable crime, but to damages done to his friends, the process of government and even to young people with idealistic dreams of a political life.

Tarry succeeds in his portrayal of this ragged moment, which brought a flicker of damaged humanity to an almost universally vilified figure, but it struggles to overshadow the flaws throughout the remainder of the production, leaving a bland and unsatisfying aftertaste to a potentially stellar drama.

Frost/Nixon

through Feb. 6, Friday-Saturday 7:30 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m., $15-$24
Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 N. I St., Tacoma
253.272.2281