Word: bogosian
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...DRUGS, ROCK & ROLL. Eric Bogosian is the Swinburne of sleaze. The master monologuist finds fetid poetry in the butt ends of urban American lives: street people, soul-dead tough guys, ex-dopester rock stars. They crowd the stage in this one-man show, a 1990 off-Broadway hit artfully filmed by director John McNaughton...
...Drugs, Rock & Roll Call Eric Bogosian a performance artist, monologist, short-story writer or even playwright. By whatever name, he is one of the shrewdest contemporary critics of the phony, the self-serving, the amoral and the damned. This off-Broadway collection of skits is a caustic vision of greed and substance abuse...
...callers phone in with the amusing thoughts and opinions we would expect, a random sampling of the minds of the population which make a show like Champlain's popular. Yet amidst this humor are the troubles of modernity--racism, sexism, child abuse, rape, teen pregnancy, drugs, etc. While Bogosian's play is comic, its intention is in no way farcical. The problems of the culture exemplified in talk radio are of course very real, and the people treat seriously their calls and the opinions expressed in the show...
...Bogosian's idea for the show very likely came from the death of a talk show host in Denver in 1984. He writes in the liner notes found on the back of the program, "Alan Berg, an argumentative and left-leaning host, was machine-gunned down in his own drive-way by members of a white-power hate group. His death made it clear that people were listening and taking all his talk very seriously." Because the talk radio phenomenon finds its basis in social reality, Bogosian's Champlain must be taken somewhat seriously...
...emphasizing the comic value of Kent and the other callers, however, director Dan Balsam loses some of the critical edge of the play. Bogosian does not seem to intend to de-emphasize the horror of this culture, and the problem with Talk Radio is its overemphasis on the comic at the expense of the work's critical purpose. The serious mood with which the show closes does not adequately redirect the focus of the audience...