by Sierra Pasquale
Few institutions have been eulogized as often as the local newspaper, and few of those eulogies come from someone who lived inside one. The Last American Newspaper, the world premiere now playing at Capital Repertory Theatre, is written by Ken Tingley, longtime editor of The Post-Star in Glens Falls, and adapted from his own memoir. The play follows the paper’s newsroom from 1999 to 2020, through investigations, a Pulitzer Prize, and the slow squeeze of a business that no longer knows how to pay for the work. Tingley writes about the people behind the bylines, and the play works best when it stays with them.
Chief among them is Will Doolittle, played by William Oliver Watkins, who delivers the evening’s most affecting performance. Watkins gives the audience someone whose dedication to the work is visibly costing him, and of everyone on stage he travels the greatest emotional distance. His Will begins as a reporter with his convictions intact and ends somewhere much more tender and worn. Because so much of the play moves at a sprint, the moments where Watkins is allowed to slow down and simply be Will land with real force.
Christopher Innvar plays Ken Tingley, the author’s stand-in, and anchors the production as the editor holding the newsroom together while the ground shifts beneath it. Elizabeth Pietrangelo (Lydia Moore) and Lise Bruneau (Mary Joseph) round out the core newsroom, giving it the feel of a family of colleagues who finish each other’s sentences and argue over each other’s copy.
The two cast members who play multiple roles deserve particular praise. Nicholas Baroudi and Rin Allen each take on a range of characters, and each one is fully distinct. It is easy to forget that the same actor is behind so many faces. Baroudi moves between roles, including Mark Mahoney and one of the paper’s publishers, with a precision that makes each character’s voice and posture feel like a separate person. Allen does the same across an even wider range, from the newsroom’s Pam Brooks to a publisher, a rival journalist, and a voice on the phone. David Girard, who likewise shifts among several roles, brings the same clarity to his work. In a play with a large cast of characters, this kind of doubling could easily have become confusing. Here it is one of the production’s quiet pleasures.
The set design by Brian Prather is the other star, and at times it competes with the people on it. The stage is filled with desks, and as the newspaper shrinks under the pressure of its changing owners, the desks dwindle with it. Watching the newsroom empty out is a devastating visual shorthand for what the play is about: no one has to announce that the paper is failing when the furniture is disappearing. The computers evolve as the years pass too, tracing two decades of technology in the background of the action. The set becomes something close to a character, and its slow erosion tells the story of the industry’s decline more efficiently than any speech could.
Sometimes, though, the set asks for more attention than the scene can spare. The shifts in furniture and equipment can pull the eye away from the actors at moments when the story needs the audience to stay with them. It is a small distraction, but a real one in a production where the design is otherwise so purposeful.
The larger challenge is pace. Director Marcus Kyd keeps the show moving at breakneck speed, and there is a clear logic to it: a newsroom is loud, crowded, and always up against a deadline. The frenzy is convincing, and the staging captures that sense of never having enough time. But the same energy that makes the newsroom believable also makes it difficult to invest in the story. Scenes rush by before their emotional stakes have fully registered, and the play’s biggest events, the triumphs and the losses, can feel more like headlines than moments. The chaos may well be the point, an echo of the disorder in which these journalists worked, and I admired the commitment to it. I only wished for a few more places where the play let itself breathe.
Those places do exist, and they are where the play is at its strongest. When the action narrows to two or three people and the noise falls away, the writing finds a warmth and humor that the busier scenes only hint at. It is in those quieter stretches that the audience is reminded what is really at stake, which is less the death of an industry than the loss of the people who gave their working lives to it.
For anyone in the Capital Region, the play carries a particular resonance. This is a local story, told by a local editor, about a paper many in the audience will have read, and it is being given its world premiere here. That alone makes it worth seeing. What lingers after the lights come up is not the plot but the image of that emptied newsroom, and the people who kept showing up to it anyway.
The Last American Newspaper is at its best when it slows down and trusts its actors. Even at its most frantic, it makes a heartfelt case for the work of local journalism and the people who do it.
Capital Repertory Theatre presents the world premiere of The Last American Newspaper, produced in collaboration with Adirondack Theatre Festival. Written by Ken Tingley. Directed by Marcus Kyd. Featuring Rin Allen as Pam Brooks/Publisher Rona/Nancy DeRusha/Woman on the Phone; Nicholas Baroudi as Mark Mahoney/Publisher Rick; Lise Bruneau as Mary Joseph; David Girard as Jack Cushing/Don Lehman/Publisher Jim/Deplorable Guy; Christopher Innvar as Ken Tingley; Elizabeth Pietrangelo as Lydia Moore; and William Oliver Watkins as Will Doolittle. Set design by Brian Prather. Lighting design by Elijah Thomas. Costume design by Brittney Belz. Sound design by Evdoxia Ragkou. Choreography by Kelly King. Fight direction by Joe Isenberg. Dramaturgy by Miriam Weisfeld. Casting by Stephanie Klapper, CSA. Production stage management by Kate Kern. Assistant stage management by Madison Rivera. Rin Allen serves as fight captain. Commissioned and developed by Adirondack Theatre Festival. Miriam Weisfeld, Producing Artistic Director; Philip Morris, Chief Executive Officer. Performances run Sept. 25–Oct. 18, with one 15-minute intermission. Capital Repertory Theatre, Albany, NY.