Photo Flash: First Look at FROST/NIXON at Maltz Jupiter Theatre

In this presidential election year, nothing is more fitting then to look back at one of the nation's most complicated men ever to have served as leader of the free world.

The Maltz Jupiter Theatre plans to do just that with Peter Morgan's 90-minute Tony-nominated play Frost/Nixon, onstage February 7 - 21 at the award-winning regional theatre.

In 1977, David Frost was a struggling TV show host desperate to reignite his career and Richard Nixon was the disgraced former president of the United States. When Frost approached Nixon about doing a series of televised interviews, he saw it as a path back into the limelight. Nixon saw it as a chance to regain respect and dignity. Ripped from the headlines and featuring a 13-member ensemble, this riveting drama illuminates one of the most monumental political interviews of all time.

"Frost/Nixon is an exhilaratingly fast-paced, cleverly structured play by one of this century's leading contemporary playwrights. It's a perfect opportunity to reflect on our history," said Andrew Kato, the Theatre's producing artistic director and chief executive.

A fictionalization of the famous interviews that David Frost conducted with disgraced ex-president Richard Nixon in 1977, the play originally premiered at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in London in 2006, starring Michael Sheen as the talk-show host and Frank Langella as the former president.Frost/Nixon then played at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End and on Broadway in 2007 (again starring Langella and Sheen), receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. The pair also starred in the 2008 British-American historical drama film by the same name, adapted from the play.

Directed by multiple Carbonell Award-winning South Florida director J. Barry Lewis (whose recent work at the Theatre includes Glengarry Glen Ross,Dial M for Murder and Doubt: A Parable), the play will feature a cast of 13 acclaimed actors, including Broadway veteran John Jellison as Richard Nixon (whose extensive work on Broadway includes Motown The Musical, Memphis, All Shook Up and Phantom Of The Opera, in addition to work in regional theatres across the nation and on TV) and acclaimed performer Peter Simon Hilton as David Frost (whose work includes Oklahoma!, the National Tours of LES MISERABLES, Hamlet at the Denver Center and many Shakespeare productions).

Other cast members include Greg Jackson as John Birt (who just finished a Broadway run in the Tony Award winner for Best Musical, A Gentleman's Guide To Love and Murder) and Vanessa Morosco as Caroline Cushing (whose work includes The Importance of Being Earnest at Shakespeare Theatre DC, The Way of the World at Yale Rep and Love's Labour's Lost at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre).

"Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon is history re-imagined; it follows the events leading up to and including those momentous conversations," Lewis said. "Though we know the outcome, what is revealed in the play is unique to that history. Morgan has written a play full of tension and discovery, exploring the brilliance of each man as they attempt to set the truth to history."

The cast also features a host of lauded South Florida actors, including Carbonell Award winner Kenneth Kay (a faculty member at the Theatre's Paul and Sandra Goldner Conservatory of Performing Arts), Wayne LeGette (seen in the Theatre's production of Jolson at the Winter Garden) and Jim Ballard (last seen in the Theatre's productions of Dial M for Murder and Doubt: A Parable), as well as Armando Acevedo, Dave Scotti, Gretchen Porro, Vincent Bolchoz, Daniel Kies and Robert Scruggs.

Photos by Alicia Donelan

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