Move Over, Obama

| 13 Aug 2014 | 07:20

    The transfer to Broadway from The Public Theater has been kind to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, the tongue-in-cheek retelling of President Andrew Jackson’s life and presidency. During the trip uptown, Kristine Nielsen joined the merry band of rock ‘n’ rollers, as the wheelchair-bound narrator, mostly keeping her Kristine Nielsen tics in check (congratulations are due to writer-director Alex Timbers). And most of the kinks from the first production have been ironed out.

    But the show has now acquired a patina of self-amusement that occasionally prevents the audience from enjoying themselves. The mugging has reached gargantuan proportions (particularly from Lucas Near-Verbrugghe, and his Twinkie, as Martin van Buren). The first half features multiple dead spots, as Benjamin Walker slowly edges his stool to the spotlight or Near-Verbrugghe turns his Twinkie into eyeglasses. And Walker still struggles with his high notes, though happily he has a microphone in his hands for those songs much more frequently than in the previous production.

    And in an oddity for a Broadway show—particularly a musical—the writing remains superior to the performances. Everyone on stage is a strong performer (kudos go to Emily Young’s weird, angry delivery of the dark “Ten Little Indians”), but not even Walker gives a performance that couldn’t be matched or exceeded by someone else; only Jeff Hiller’s hilarious and bizarre line readings have the feel of specificity. As we watch Jackson grow from an orphan to a bloodthirsty anti-Indian crusader to the seventh president of the United States over the course of 90 minutes, high and low points of Jackson’s life are highlighted by either Timbers’ spoofy script or Michael Friedman’s incisive, defiantly modern lyrics. When the story takes a darker turn to the political maneuverings that marred Jackson’s first attempt at the presidential office (Friedman outdoes himself with the compact, biting “The Corrupt Bargain”), the musical gains some missing heft, particularly this far into the Obama presidency and its air of missed opportunities and let-down.

    Jackson, having won office based on a populist campaign, finds that the populace actually wants a leader who’ll tell them what to do, even if they don’t want to do it. They’ve passed the buck, and Jackson can’t quite reconcile what’s good for the country with what he thinks is good for it. So we get the Trail of Tears, a mass, forced immigration of Native Americans that gained Jackson the reputation of an American Hitler (despite his continued presence on 20 dollar bills). Watching Walker and company turn serious is surprisingly refreshing, given that much of the show’s success has been founded on its blithe disregard for period accuracy (and the latter half of the show feels far less heavy-handed than it did at The Public). If Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, with its history lessons disguised as rock and roll, is representative of the future of the American musical, fans of the genre have little to worry about. After all, when was the last time you enjoyed yourself while learning about politicians giving Native Americans smallpox blankets?

    Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

    Open run, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, 242 W. 45th St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-239-6200; $51.50–$136.50.