Tricky Dicky and Frosty face off in the 1970s' most riveting battle of wits Frost/Nixon Donmar Warehouse, London WC1

Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan's play about David Frost's audacious 1977 television interviews with the disgraced US President Richard Nixon is, on one level, a brilliant analysis of the tripwires surrounding the celebrity interview. The courting of the prey: Nixon took a year to respond to Frost's invitation. The preparation of the interviewer: Frost surrounded himself with a crack team of experts veritably soaked in Watergate. Then, the agonising dance of the televised confrontation itself. Morgan takes time to set up his stall, but once the two men are facing one another in the plush studio chairs, the pace is breathless.

Frost knew Nixon was a good "get", but perhaps was not quite so aware that he was up against a formidable adversary, a man desperate to rehabilitate his ruined reputation, yet also a man whose absolute pardon by President Gerald Ford meant that he had never had to, and was never going to have to, stand before a court of law. And if Frost thought Nixon might be easy, Nixon was of the opinion that 28 hours of taped interrogation with Frost would be a warm bath. The extent to which both men are wrong-footed by the other sends sparks into the auditorium. In tortuous answers up to 30 minutes in length, Nixon rambles on about everyone from Henry Kissinger to Chairman Mao and does anything and everything to deny the chat-show host a chance to stab him in the underbelly. Yet when Frost eventually pierces his carapace, the entire Nixon edifice slowly crumbles before us. Indeed, Morgan suggests Tricky Dicky had yearned to make some form of confession for years. It just took a British chat-show host to get it out of him.

Michael Grandage's spare, careful production which, through archive film and music, perfectly paints the cheesy wonderment of the mid-1970s, takes time to introduce us to each household name. The night kicks off with another famous Nixon moment on the "tube" (as he calls it): his televised resignation to the American people on 8 August 1974. With gravelly voice, beetling brows and fluttering old man's hands, the Broadway actor Frank Langella inhabits the giant frame of Nixon with ease, giving a studied portrait of a man who ran a superpower, and then lost it. Yet Nixon was by no means careless: this is someone who knew his chance against JFK was lost due to "perspiration" (on the famous televised dual with Kennedy, Nixon came over as sweaty and shifty), and as he explains to Frost, never appeared without a handkerchief by his side again.

Frost comes off as equally nuanced. Michael Sheen, in flares and sideburns, dives beyond the stereotype of "Hello, good evening and welcome," (mercifully here cut short) beloved of too many impressionists, and delivers an edgy, funny depiction of a man so anxious to rescue his reputation (his New York show had just been axed), that he books Nixon at a personal cost of $600,000 without having first secured the syndication. It's obvious why Morgan was so attracted by the story: two giants, each on their uppers, each acutely aware that in the gladiatorial ring of the television studio there can only be one winner.

There's a brilliant cameo from Rufus Wright as John Birt, latterly the director general of the BBC, but then LWT's head of current affairs, who is brought in to produce the interviews. Birt's owlish fastidiousness ("I like lists") only throws light on Frost's great talent for being the heart and soul of showbiz: on the way to LA to secure the interview, we see both men flying first class on BOAC. Birt is asleep, eye mask on, sensible socks on, sensible shoes carefully lined up beneath his chair. Meanwhile, Frosty is puffing away on a giant cigar and chatting up the babe in the opposite aisle. He's no mug, though: when he discovers she is reading Middlemarch, he reveals himself as a bit of an Eliot expert. Naturally, he gets the girl. And the interview, and the victory, and the global accolades. Yet with both the entertainer and the politician, Morgan shows us the cold sweat beneath the smiles.

For further info and booking details visit www.donmarwarehouse.com

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