Chris Pine is splayed across a red restaurant banquette as if it were the throne Hollywood is offering him as one of its newly anointed male hotties. To say Pine’s actual seating is not a throne would be an understatement. The star of Paramount Pictures’ summer hit film “Star Trek” is perched on tattered old furnishings that would look at home in an Edward Hopper painting. The ratty red banquette will be a focal point of action in the political drama “Farragut North,” when it opens at the Geffen Playhouse on Wednesday.
Pine, 28, costars with ” Sex and the City’s” Chris Noth as media massagers in the psychological drama inspired by Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign, which briefly claimed the energies of the playwright and recovering politico Beau Willimon. Pine plays Stephen, a wunderkind press secretary who prides himself on his ability to manipulate any situation.
At the moment, Stephen is trying to work his magic on an attractive young intern played by ” Juno’s” Olivia Thirlby, who was in the New York production’s original cast last fall. In a Geffen rehearsal room, under the watchful eye of director Doug Hughes (who also helmed the current Mark Taper Forum production of David Mamet’s “Oleanna”), Molly/Olivia has just entered to drop off an envelope for Stephen/Chris at a dingy restaurant in East Des Moines, Iowa, where he’s making calls. And now he’s trying to beguile her into sticking around for a drink.
The characters play a flirtatious game of verbal ping-pong, and then Pine suddenly mimes reeling in Thirlby as if she’s on the end of an invisible hook. Hughes is delighted. “Your silver-tongued eloquence claims another helpless victim,” he says.