Jericho Arts Centre to April 12, 2026
Tickets from $32 (students $15 with ID) at 604-224-8007 or www.unitedplayers.ca
Posted March 25, 2026
My heart did a happy little jig when, early in this United Players’ production of Network, Max Schumacher (portrayed by Tom McBeath) and Howard Beale (David Marr) appear together in a bar. When these two stellar, seasoned Vancouver actors (Vancouver Playhouse, Arts Club Theatre, Bard on the Beach, theatres across Canada, as well as TV and screen) appear on the same stage at the same time, it’s something to celebrate. Kudos go to United Players’ artistic director Sarah Rodgers, director Kathleen Duborg and the entire cast and crew for this pre-Easter treat.
But the treats don’t stop there. In Lee Hall’s 2017 adaptation of the 1976 multi-award-winning film by Paddy Chayefsky, director Duborg, set designer Emily Dotson, lighting designer Mark Carter and a crew of projection and video designers and technicians, turn the Jericho Arts Centre stage into a TV studio: cameramen, makeup, the booth crew – a bluster of people who put the news together. It feels authentic with all the hustle and bustle of live broadcasting.
Marr, as Beale, the UBS TV evening news anchor – “a childless widower with an alcohol problem” – sits at the news desk while behind him is projected a huge image of what the cameras are capturing for their viewing audience. The level of authenticity this small theatre company achieves is remarkable.
To recap the plot: Beale has been sacked by UBS TV due to falling ratings. He pleads to have one last telecast to give himself the opportunity to leave with dignity; however, once back on air, he threatens to commit suicide live on TV. But instead of offing himself, he delivers a rant: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” and he encourages people all over the country to throw open their windows and shout the same. And they do.
Ratings skyrocket and the board decides to keep him on, to let him continue to vent while the network cashes in. His old friend and colleague Max Schumacher stands by but is aghast at the network’s unapologetic opportunism and Beale’s plummeting mental health. Max has problems of his own; he falls prey to the advances of Diana Christensen, a young TV programmer who doesn’t care whom she destroys as she climbs the career ladder.
In Hall’s 2017 stage adaptation, he keeps pretty much to the film’s original narrative. To some extent he plays down Schumacher’s mid-life infidelity with Diana Christiansen (Alison Wandzura). Intimacy director Alina Quarin coaches McBeath and Wandzura through a sensitively choreographed sex scene making this production ‘16+’ entertainment.
But more importantly and what makes this adaptation so powerful, is that Hall adds a passionate epilogue that catapaults Network eerily and prophetically into the here and now: the Internet, social media and the complete erosion of ‘real’ news. Marr’s delivery is spectacular and terrifying.
What is truly terrifying is that we are all still mad as hell and we seem powerless to do anything about it.
This production of Network is an outstanding show that, in better times, could have graced ‘as is’ the Vancouver Playhouse stage. It makes an important statement about some news media (like Fox News) that’s rife with what Stephen Colbert calls “relative truthiness” and that peddles fake news not news supported by facts.
See it. Talk about it. And support theatre companies committed to truly relevant theatre for our time. Two that I would recommend right now: HARM at Studio 16. People, Places and Things at the Cultch. Coming up: On Native Land at the York.