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The Columnist: A Play
A new play from the Pulitzer- and Tony Award–winning author of Proof, coming to Broadway this April
In midcentury America, newspaper columnists are kings—and Joseph Alsop wears the biggest crown. Joe sits at the nexus of Washington life: beloved, feared, and courted in equal measure by the very people whose careers and futures he determines. But as the sixties dawn and America undergoes dizzying change, the intense political dramas Joe has been throwing his weight around in—supporting the war in Vietnam and Soviet containment, criticizing student activism—come to bear a profound personal cost.
Based on the real-life story of Joe Alsop, whose columns at the time of his 1974 retirement were running three times a week in more than three hundred newspapers, David Auburn’s The Columnist is a deft blend of history and storytelling. A hilarious, searing portrait of the glorious rewards and devastating losses that accompany ego, ambition, and the pursuit of power, The Columnist pens a vital letter from a radically changing decade to our own turbulent era.
In midcentury America, newspaper columnists are kings—and Joseph Alsop wears the biggest crown. Joe sits at the nexus of Washington life: beloved, feared, and courted in equal measure by the very people whose careers and futures he determines. But as the sixties dawn and America undergoes dizzying change, the intense political dramas Joe has been throwing his weight around in—supporting the war in Vietnam and Soviet containment, criticizing student activism—come to bear a profound personal cost.
Based on the real-life story of Joe Alsop, whose columns at the time of his 1974 retirement were running three times a week in more than three hundred newspapers, David Auburn’s The Columnist is a deft blend of history and storytelling. A hilarious, searing portrait of the glorious rewards and devastating losses that accompany ego, ambition, and the pursuit of power, The Columnist pens a vital letter from a radically changing decade to our own turbulent era.
99 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 2012
About the author
David Auburn
19 books58 followersDavid Auburn is an American playwright, screenwriter, and theatre director. He is best known for his 2000 play Proof, which won the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play and Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 18, 2022
Apparently this got John Lithgow a Tony nomination in 2012. I started Googling some of the people mentioned in
Fellow Travelers
to see if they were real and found out that Joe Alsop really was a gay journalist who worked in Washington, D. C. and that this play existed. I loved
Proof
when I read it in college so I wanted to check it out.
Brief biographical play about Alsop from 1954, when he's blackmailed in Moscow after being photographed being intimate with another man, to the summer of 1968 as protests against the Vietnam War really develop. Gives insight into his home life (he married a woman who knew he was gay and became a stepfather to her teenage daughter), his relationship with his brother with whom he cowrote for a time, the JFK assassination (he and JFK were friends), and his struggle to accept the changing tide of journalism (he disliked how younger reporters portrayed the Vietnam War as unacceptable loss of life).
Reading this so close after Fellow Travelers definitely did deepen my appreciation for both, so I'm contemplating continuing on and reading more fiction and nonfiction about the era. The Moscow blackmail incident was apparently not all that well known for a while so I'm glad Auburn really did his research and cared about portraying the intersection of Alsop's identity and his relationships with his wife and brother. Especially when there was a debate several years ago about how Broadway was simply reviving old queer plays instead of spotlighting new talent, I wish we could get more works like this centered on historical figures who haven't gotten much attention (though preferably spotlighting BIPOC and trans voices).
Brief biographical play about Alsop from 1954, when he's blackmailed in Moscow after being photographed being intimate with another man, to the summer of 1968 as protests against the Vietnam War really develop. Gives insight into his home life (he married a woman who knew he was gay and became a stepfather to her teenage daughter), his relationship with his brother with whom he cowrote for a time, the JFK assassination (he and JFK were friends), and his struggle to accept the changing tide of journalism (he disliked how younger reporters portrayed the Vietnam War as unacceptable loss of life).
Reading this so close after Fellow Travelers definitely did deepen my appreciation for both, so I'm contemplating continuing on and reading more fiction and nonfiction about the era. The Moscow blackmail incident was apparently not all that well known for a while so I'm glad Auburn really did his research and cared about portraying the intersection of Alsop's identity and his relationships with his wife and brother. Especially when there was a debate several years ago about how Broadway was simply reviving old queer plays instead of spotlighting new talent, I wish we could get more works like this centered on historical figures who haven't gotten much attention (though preferably spotlighting BIPOC and trans voices).
September 25, 2018
یک نمایشنامه با درونمایه بررسی رسانه . قصه ی یک ستون نویس سیاسی در امریکا ی دهه 50 و 60 که با چالش های وطن پرستی در مقابل ازادی , افکار جدید در مقابل سیاست سنتی دست و پنجه نرم میکند . نمایش به تاثیر روزافزون رسانه ی نشریات بر سیاسیون و سیاست های ملی امریکا میپردازد . جو یک ستون نویس مشهور است که به همراه برادرش به نوشتن در مورد سیاست های کلان امریکا به خصوص جنگ میپردازد . او که یک وطن پرست سنتی تقریبا افراطیست در تناقضی درونی با جامعه ی جوان محیطش قرا دارد و در این چالش رو به سقوط و شکست میرود .
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 13, 2015
The play's greatest strength is it's structure and plotting. By pulling out the choicest moments, Auburn creates a sense of the sweep of history even while spinning his characters through it. However, the main character remains somewhat of a mystery, even by the end, overshadowed by his more complex and compelling brother. A lesser work in many respects than Proof, but expertly plotted and not without it's surprising moments.
August 1, 2026
The play "The Columnist" by David Auburn, which I saw in its original run on Broadway, concerns the real life story of Joseph Alsop, an influential columnist in mid 20th century America. He saw his audience not as the citizens of this country, but as the politicians who made the life and death decisions that affected these voters. The play combines the dual narratives of how his closeted homosexuality and virulent combativeness concerning the Vietnam War come into conflict.
The play opens in Moscow, 1954, with Joe post coitus in bed after an assignation with Andrei, a young, Russian tour guide. They discuss their sexual congress, Andrei's desire for a better life, the US vs. the Soviet Union, and different assumptions about how they wound up in bed. Joe says he assumed the State Department arranged the meet-up while Andrei insists Joe offered to buy him a drink and one thing led to another. Joe is vulnerable in these moments in contrast to the rest of the play in which he relentlessly bullies others in his life. The scene ends, after Andrei leaves, with a mysterious knock on the door that will resonate throughout the play.
I have described the first scene in ways I will refrain describing the rest of it in order not to divulge spoilers. We see Joe's influence though throughout the political world, his marriage to Susan and his parenting of Susan's daughter Abigail, and his sibling relationship with often his co-writer Stewart. Joe becomes more and more isolated from what is happening on the ground in both the US and Vietnam because of his fame and his close relationships with the power makers in DC. This question of does access to the wheelers and dealers in DC affect the veracity of reporting it generates is still a valid question in the Trump era. Alsop's column parrots that of the leadership of the country in any disagreement with the US war aims is viewed by those leaders as unpatriotic and damaging to America's chances of victory, Vietnam then and Iran now.
Auburn also explores he concurrent narrative of how Joe's living in the closet harms his relationships with his loved ones. Although he insists that he had been forthright with Susan when they married, she doesn't realize how living without physical affection will impact her. And his dismissiveness of her suggests he mainly marries her to offset the rumors of his being gay. We never see him question the fairness of his having to live in the closet because his chief concern is his relationships with the president and his cabinet and his influence with them. By the end of the play, we see them threaten to out someone else, something that has worried him about his own situation throughout the narrative.
All in all, I like "The Columnist" more than Auburn's more famous work "Proof." I still remember John Lithgow's sublime portrayal of Joe.
The play opens in Moscow, 1954, with Joe post coitus in bed after an assignation with Andrei, a young, Russian tour guide. They discuss their sexual congress, Andrei's desire for a better life, the US vs. the Soviet Union, and different assumptions about how they wound up in bed. Joe says he assumed the State Department arranged the meet-up while Andrei insists Joe offered to buy him a drink and one thing led to another. Joe is vulnerable in these moments in contrast to the rest of the play in which he relentlessly bullies others in his life. The scene ends, after Andrei leaves, with a mysterious knock on the door that will resonate throughout the play.
I have described the first scene in ways I will refrain describing the rest of it in order not to divulge spoilers. We see Joe's influence though throughout the political world, his marriage to Susan and his parenting of Susan's daughter Abigail, and his sibling relationship with often his co-writer Stewart. Joe becomes more and more isolated from what is happening on the ground in both the US and Vietnam because of his fame and his close relationships with the power makers in DC. This question of does access to the wheelers and dealers in DC affect the veracity of reporting it generates is still a valid question in the Trump era. Alsop's column parrots that of the leadership of the country in any disagreement with the US war aims is viewed by those leaders as unpatriotic and damaging to America's chances of victory, Vietnam then and Iran now.
Auburn also explores he concurrent narrative of how Joe's living in the closet harms his relationships with his loved ones. Although he insists that he had been forthright with Susan when they married, she doesn't realize how living without physical affection will impact her. And his dismissiveness of her suggests he mainly marries her to offset the rumors of his being gay. We never see him question the fairness of his having to live in the closet because his chief concern is his relationships with the president and his cabinet and his influence with them. By the end of the play, we see them threaten to out someone else, something that has worried him about his own situation throughout the narrative.
All in all, I like "The Columnist" more than Auburn's more famous work "Proof." I still remember John Lithgow's sublime portrayal of Joe.
November 1, 2024
There’s an economy here that belies the excess of the central character: this play is short, proceeds at a furious pace covering both an individual life and the life of a country, and as such jumps from scene to scene with rapidity and force.
Holding it all together is the central character study of Alsop, a mix of bravado, intelligence, and an insatiable ambition that he embraces without shame.
Recommended for history buffs, and for those interested in works that capture a sort of portrait-in-performance as a form of character study.
Pair with works that explore the ways that holding to one’s character and beliefs without being open to growth and change ultimately turns in on itself. Thinking King Lear, Fool for Love, No Country for Old Men.
Holding it all together is the central character study of Alsop, a mix of bravado, intelligence, and an insatiable ambition that he embraces without shame.
Recommended for history buffs, and for those interested in works that capture a sort of portrait-in-performance as a form of character study.
Pair with works that explore the ways that holding to one’s character and beliefs without being open to growth and change ultimately turns in on itself. Thinking King Lear, Fool for Love, No Country for Old Men.
August 12, 2021
Interesting play that is historical fiction inspired by the life of The Washington Post's columnist Joseph Alsop, interesting both as drama and as a look-back into U.S. history, national politics and journalism at its highest levels back in the 1950s-60s.
Can't say I took serious the rumor that presidents of the United States took counsel with the elite columnists who were syndicated across the country — until Trump started taking cues about issues from what the Fox News talking heads were spewing.
History shows that presidents listened to Alsop, who was syndicated in some 190 U.S. newspapers, and the world is not the better for it.
If someone staged this play I'd love to see it live.
Can't say I took serious the rumor that presidents of the United States took counsel with the elite columnists who were syndicated across the country — until Trump started taking cues about issues from what the Fox News talking heads were spewing.
History shows that presidents listened to Alsop, who was syndicated in some 190 U.S. newspapers, and the world is not the better for it.
If someone staged this play I'd love to see it live.
October 6, 2022
As a boy growing up in the 1960s nary a week passed without seeing the byline of Joseph or Stewart Alsop. That said, I understood virtually nothing of what they wrote. After discovering this book last week & reading the text, I can now safely add their life story & their life’s work to the “I should have known that…” column of my life. Good book!
November 16, 2024
-Purchased at Amoeba
-Read at home
-I love how Joe walks from the National Mall into his study for the final scene as the set changes around him - What a great transition to end the play.
-My favorite passage
Pg. 86
JOE: "And if you run into him in Boston, say hello to poor Philip for me."
(She smiles, briefly.)
ABIGAL: "I can't. He was drafted."
-Read at home
-I love how Joe walks from the National Mall into his study for the final scene as the set changes around him - What a great transition to end the play.
-My favorite passage
Pg. 86
JOE: "And if you run into him in Boston, say hello to poor Philip for me."
(She smiles, briefly.)
ABIGAL: "I can't. He was drafted."
November 9, 2022
Moral ending. Good representation of foibles. Snappy dialogue. Quick paced. Scene changes are necessary. Setting and characters realistic.
October 20, 2025
A fun enough play but way better if you saw Lithgow do it instead of read the text. (He's funny when he's snobby!)
June 12, 2012
A good play. Missed it in NY (along with several other plays whose scripts I just ordered, so I can keep up with what I'm not seeing). Offers the story of the columnist, Joseph Alsop, who not only influenced many thinkers of his generation (before and after the Vietnam war) but also advised a number of presidents and cabinet members. He applauded Kennedy for staring down the Soviets in Cuba; he urged the surge to McNamara and Westmoreland in Vietnam; but his voice dimmed as the hippie generation took hold. He was a gay man before anyone dared come out of the closet. He was manipulated by both the KGB and the CIA. But his soaring intellect carried him above the frays, and he continued to write for years. His brother saw the light (RE Vietnam) long before Joe did. His step-daughter forgives Joe his trespasses and dismisses his apologies for his hidden life. Sorry I missed John Lithgow as Joe.
June 13, 2012
Totally engaged in this-I think it helps that I have a good grasp on history and I know who Joe Alsop is, but it's really well put together. Fully fleshed out characters, intense dialogue, and fascinating subject matter make this an all around great read.
August 1, 2012
Surely not Auburn at his best, but it's still David Auburn.
Interesting biographical representation of Joseph Alsop's life and career. I learned something, as is usually the case with an Auburn play. Enjoyable, funny, saddening, and a good read.
Interesting biographical representation of Joseph Alsop's life and career. I learned something, as is usually the case with an Auburn play. Enjoyable, funny, saddening, and a good read.
January 10, 2014
I had never heard of Joe or Stewart Alsop before reading this, so the two stars I gave this book can represent each of them. Good guys to know, anecdotally. A fine piece, but mostly just made me want to re-read "Farragut North."
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews