STAGE WIRE : ‘Pravda’ American Premiere Applauded by the Critics

Howard Brenton and David Hare’s “Pravda” isn’t set in Moscow but Fleet Street. Its hero is one Lambert Le Roux, a swaggering newspaper magnate from South Africa who makes his employes write to his party line.

Rupert Murdoch? Adolf Hitler? Those were some of the guesses as to Le Roux’s real-life model when Anthony Hopkins played the role at the National Theatre of Great Britain in 1985.

Now “Pravda” has had its American premiere at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, starring Daniel Davis as the dastardly Le Roux.

The critics were impressed. Mike Steele of the Minneapolis Tribune was reminded of the cynicism of “The Front Page,” translated into the even more opportunistic terms of the 1980s.

“What makes ‘Pravda’ fascinating,” Steele wrote, “is that Le Roux is motivated less by simple greed than by ego, a stimulus that in the era of Murdoch, Donald Trump and Ivan Boesky seems ever more important. The system can deal with greed, but it lies down in front of the naked self.”

Roy Close of the St. Paul Pioneer Press praised Davis for “a marvelously complete characterization--a cocked head, splayed feet, clenched fists and a South African accent of almost frightening intensity. It’s a great role, and he fills it up.”

Sylviane Gold of the Wall Street Journal called Davis’ Le Roux “a fabulous conception.” She was reminded of a Shaw hero “whose relentless logic forces (him) to the wrong side of every argument--and us to reconsider our most basic beliefs.”

Robert Collins, Minnesota Public Radio: “The title is the Russian word for truth. In Le Roux’s world newspapers are just another branch of the entertainment industry, and truth has no role to play. As wild and free-swinging as ‘Pravda’ is, it’s true enough to be legitimately scary.”

“The Paper Gramophone” really is a Russian play, a love story set in Moscow just after the war. Last Sunday we described its rehearsals under director Yuri Yeremin at the Hartford Stage. Now the reviews are in.

Edgar Kloten of the West Hartford News thought the play and the production “lovely and bittersweet.”

Malcolm Johnson of the Hartford Courant found Yeremin’s staging “almost unfailingly beautiful, full of images that pull at the emotions and linger in the mind’s eye,” but wasn’t totally persuaded by Alexander Chervinsky’s script.

Markland Taylor of the New Haven Register found the script “clumsy, unsubtle and old-fashioned” and thought that Yeremin’s expressionistic staging looked “pasted on.”

Have you heard the original-cast album of “Les Miserables”? Not unless you’ve heard the French-language album, recorded years before the show was rewritten for London and Broadway. It’s got a harsh, mean sound that eludes the show in English, and it’s finally on the American market thanks to a small company called Relativity Records. Information at (718) 740-5700.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK. Lambert Le Roux in “Pravda”--”Why go to the trouble of producing good papers, when bad are so much easier? And they sell better too.”