
Review: ‘Hardball’ is brilliant commentary on television ‘journalism’
Napa Valley Register Review by John Henry Martin Aug 7, 2019 Valley Players’ latest production, Victoria Stewart’s “Hardball,” about a young journalist who becomes a right-wing talk show pundit, is a stunningly produced, vitriolic take-down of today’s industry of entertainment journalism. It is yet another winner, cementing Valley Players’ reputation as a serious theater company known for the highest quality production of its shows. Beverly Wiles Shotwell is Virginia Eames, a young reporter at The Washington Post. In an attempt to prove that the reporters she works with are partisan, despite the directive not to be, she wears a George W. Bush pin to the newsroom, knowing that everyone she works with is voting for John Kerry. The dirty looks she gets proves her point, but she ends up losing…