How Bryan Cranston's towering performance in 'Network' packs new potency into Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 tale of media mind control
NEW YORK - Two thoughts occurred to me at the end of Ivo van Hove's stage production of "Network": Bryan Cranston is one of the most fearless actors working today, and Paddy Chayefsky attained a kind of prophecy when he wrote the screenplay for the 1976 Sidney Lumet film that saw straight through its own media age into ours.
We've all known how good Cranston is from his work on "Breaking Bad," the cable drama that set a standard this new proliferous streaming era has had difficulty matching. Ballyhooed as he was for his performance as Walter White, the terminally ill chemistry teacher turned meth dealer, Cranston could have counted his Emmys and played it safe. Instead, he took to the stage in a tour de force of ferocious politicking as Lyndon B. Johnson in Robert Schenkkan's "All the Way."
While a lesser actor
