Actor David Storch has been cast as TV host Frost, seen as a lightweight until he came head-to-head with Nixon. (Playhouse Theatre) British TV host David Frost interviewed former U.S. president Richard Nixon for close to 24 hours in 1977, but the heart of the series of interviews that were televised was a five-minute segment during which Nixon fessed up.

Frost/Nixon, the play that was a hit in London and New York and is previewing in Vancouver on Saturday, explores the implications of that short, revealing segment of groundbreaking TV.

The Playhouse presentation, co-produced with Toronto's Canadian Stage Co., stars Len Cariou as Nixon and David Storch as Frost.

Frost had a reputation as a playboy, and a bit of a lightweight interviewer, but the series of interviews with Nixon had TV watchers glued to their screens, Storch told CBC News.

"He changed and I think the interviews changed the sense of what an interview ought to be," he said.

"It was that he [Nixon] fessed up. In fact there were 12 days of taping and the overwhelming sense was that 10 of those days were an absolute failure from the Frost camp. And what's amazing, and this is pointed out in the play, is that five minutes quite made everyone forget all the other 11 hours and 55 minutes and that's the power of television," Storch said.

The Tony Award-winning play is the stage debut for Peter Morgan, the British screenwriter who penned The Queen, and he uses techniques he polished writing for film and the small screen to bring the story to life on stage.

"It's fast and it's sexy and it definitely tells the story," said director Ted Dykstra, who starred in the Dora-Award winning Fire for CanStage earlier this year.

"It is very episodic in nature, very fast, scene changes like crazy, shifts narration, use of video all that stuff. I liken it to The West Wing or A Few Good Men," he added.

Before agreeing to be interviewed by Frost, Nixon had not granted an interview since he resigned in disgrace in 1974 over the Watergate scandal. He had never been successful on TV, and was ill at ease in front of the cameras.

Actor Len Cariou, shown in August 2006, says he is careful to avoid the cartoonish 'Tricky Dick' image of Richard Nixon. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) In fact, he tried to control the process, demanding that no questions be asked about Watergate until the end and taking 23 minutes to answer the first question.

"He saw it as his chance to set the record straight," said Cariou, who portrays Nixon.

"He, I think, underestimated what Frost was going to bring to the table and I think that, wrongly, he thought he was his intellectual superior and it turns out of course that he wasn't and Frost finally just made him fess up, if you will. But also I think Nixon was at that point — he says, 'I'm tired. I don't want to do this any more.'"

Cariou said he is careful to avoid the cartoonish, jowly image of Tricky Dick that infuses the popular imagination.

"I think that it's my job to love the man because I'm portraying him and I'm walking in his shoes and I can see things from his point of view and perhaps understand why he was the way he was," he says.

The play is a clash of two huge egos, Dykstra said, and that's what makes it work as drama.

"The play suggests that what they both had in common was they both come from modest upbringing, went to sort of posh schools because their parents scraped and scrounged for them to do that, but always felt that they were the outsider, always felt like they were the little man and even though they achieved the highest places in their chosen careers still always felt like no one ever respected them," he said.

The Playhouse production of Frost/Nixon in Vancouver begins previews on Saturday and opens next Thursday.

The Canadian Stage presentation of the same play in Toronto debuts Oct. 13.

With files from Paul Grant