Howard Beale has worked as a television news anchor for years, but one day he is fired due to poor ratings. Now he decides to speak out live on air and tell the audience exactly what he thinks about everything. That angry old man unexpectedly becomes television’s greatest hit and the whole machinery of the entertainment business starts making the most of the audience ratings windfall [read: money]. Thus a ‘prophet exposing the hypocrisy of today’ is created.
Lee Hall’s new play Network is based on the 1976 film with the same name by Paddy Chayefsky.
Network premiered in London in 2017. The play moved from the stage of the Royal National Theatre to Broadway in the spring of 2019. Lee Hall’s plays The Pitmen Painters (in 2010) and Shakespeare in Love (in 2016) have been performed previously at the Estonian Drama Theatre. Network is directed by Hendrik Toompere jr. with Hendrik Toompere in the starring role.