The Farnsworth Invention

UNFAIR SHAKE Simpson, left, greets Azaria.

Photograph: Joan Marcus

Aaron Sorkin sets up his new play about the early years of television, The Farnsworth Invention, as a kind of historical boxing match, and his dialogue is correspondingly punchy. In one corner of the ring is David Sarnoff (Azaria), the gruff, powerful president of RCA in the 1930s; in the other is Philo T. Farnsworth (Simpson), a scrappy scientific prodigy who has lapped Sarnoff’s team of inventors in the race toward a workable means of transmitting images through the airwaves. Addressing the audience in tandem, these men serve as dueling narrators, and their snappy words keep the story hurtling forward through various breakthroughs, breakdowns and betrayals.

The big picture that results, however, is curiously fuzzy. The frank unreliability of both men’s narration provides cover for significant liberties that Sorkin has taken with history, ranging from the trivial (an urban legend about the first moon landing) to the pivotal (the climactic outcome of the patent dispute at the center of the play). Such documentary fudging might be forgivable if the play had anything else to offer, but Sorkin does little to illuminate either the inner lives of these men or the greater social context that made their struggle significant. So while The Farnsworth Invention—slickly staged by Des McAnuff and well-performed by a large cast—is undeniably dynamic, it is not, in the end, very moving. Diverting though they may be, Sorkin’s sound bites don’t add up to a sound meal.

—Adam Feldman