{"id":394,"date":"2010-09-23T09:17:05","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T16:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayivey.com\/wordpress\/?p=394"},"modified":"2010-09-23T09:17:05","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T16:17:05","slug":"bloody-bloody-andrew-jackson-broadway-musical-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rayivey.com\/wordpress\/bloody-bloody-andrew-jackson-broadway-musical-review\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>

It\u2019s easy for an old actor like me to get depressed about the current state of commercial theater.\u00a0 Broadway seems to have been taken over by corporate interests and slumming movie and television stars.\u00a0 A cursory look at the Internet Broadway Database (www.ibdb.com<\/a>) can be disheartening:\u00a0 Is there anything there that\u2019s not a rock concert, a Disney franchise, or a revival?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"bbaj<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m happy to report that Broadway is getting a scandalous blast of fresh air this week in the form of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson<\/em><\/strong>, a new musical by Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman about our charismatic but highly controversial seventh President.<\/p>\n

This is a crazy which show comes to Broadway from the downtown New York theater group Les Freres Corbusier.\u00a0 LFC is, according to their press materials, \u201cdevoted to aggressively visceral theater combining historical revisionism, sophomoric humor and rigorous academic research.\u201d\u00a0 Uh, so noted.<\/p>\n

Your immersion into the world of this show begins the moment you enter into Broadway\u2019s Bernard B. Jacobs Theater.\u00a0 Donyale Werle\u2019s set design spills off of the stage and engulfs the entire theater with an anarchic melange of frontier, rock and roll, and, well, blood.\u00a0 (Example: \u00a0I was sitting almost directly underneath a suspended, full-sized, upside-down pony.\u00a0 No, don\u2019t ask why.)<\/p>\n

Blood?\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0 The galaxy of tiny red lights that fill the space set you up for one of the main themes of the evening.\u00a0 More on that below.<\/p>\n

When the show begins, the young cast of fourteen (plus three on-stage musicians) take the stage with an aggressive swagger and high-octane energy that doesn\u2019t let up for the next hour and forty minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The best way I can describe the delightful show that follows is a combination of history class meets SCTV, blended together in a gumbo of rock and roll and classic burlesque theatrics.<\/p>\n

Burlesque?\u00a0 Let me be clear.\u00a0 I mean the traditional sense of burlesque; that is, an entertainment style that characterized by extremely broad, even grotesque, parody, and short, staccato rhythms.<\/p>\n

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson<\/em><\/strong> tells the story of Old Hickory through a series of raucous sketches and songs.\u00a0 It traces Jackson\u2019s history from his rough-and-ready childhood on the Indian-plagued frontier to his military heroics and ultimately his political triumphs.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Walker as Jackson has gotten a lot of buzz, much of it about how hot he is.\u00a0 In addition, the producers are aggressively marketing the sexy quotient of BBAJ<\/em><\/strong>, down to the blurb on the show\u2019s poster \u2013 \u201cHistory just got all sexypants, \u201d not to mention that the poster itself is a blatant rip-off of the cover of Bruce Springsteen\u2019s Born in the USA<\/em><\/strong> album.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Remind<\/a>
Remind you of anything?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This approach may help sell tickets, but I think it\u2019s selling the show, and Walker, short.\u00a0 Walker is certainly an attractive leading man, and he can pull off the form-fitting outfits the costumer has put him in with aplomb.\u00a0 But mostly he\u2019s just good<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a demanding role that allows him to display a dizzying range as a performer.\u00a0 Like the rest of the show, his performance is funny, sad and smart.<\/p>\n

One of the main weapons in the show\u2019s arsenal is a cheerful sense of offensiveness.\u00a0 Far from trying to clean up the less politically correct aspects of Jackson\u2019s character, BBAJ<\/em><\/strong> positively revels in them, and in fact goes out of its way to offend in any other way it can.\u00a0 This kind of humor \u2013 offensive jokes that are funny not because of their specific content but because of their sheer offensiveness \u2013 are right up my alley.\u00a0 Not everyone in the audience agreed, however.\u00a0 I heard several disapproving mutters from the theater patron sitting next to me as I guffawed at the tasteless fun the show has with the show\u2019s studious narrator character (a hilarious<\/p>\n

Kristine Nielsen).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Neilsen<\/a>
Neilsen scores big as the deranged narrator.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As mentioned above, the show makes sure you think of Jackson as being drenched in blood.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Bloody<\/a>
Bloody Bloody Benjamin Walker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure the love song between Jackson and his true love Rachel is the first one I\u2019ve ever seen in which the lovers are covered in blood by the last stanza.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a production, BBAJ<\/em><\/strong> is a remarkable piece of controlled chaos.\u00a0 The feeling of spontaneity is palpable:\u00a0 songs and scenes regularly get interrupted or even completely derailed.\u00a0 The cast is uniformly nimble, strong, and convincing throughout all of the mayhem.\u00a0 I also could actually understand what they were saying and singing, which is more than I can say for other current shows (COUGH*Next to Normal<\/em><\/strong>*COUGH).\u00a0 Much credit for the antic and intense staging to director Alex Timbers.<\/p>\n

Another genius thing the show does is to make the political world of the early 19th<\/sup> Century feel startlingly, alarmingly, familiar.\u00a0 Far from being a golden age of innocence, the show makes clear that politics and statecraft have always been a corrupt, rigged game.\u00a0 Playing Monroe, Van Buren, and Clay, respectively, Ben Steinfeld, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe and Bryce Pinkham regularly stop the show with their broad and brave clowning.\u00a0 And special mention must be made of Jeff Hiller, who turns John Quincy Adams into an astonishingly funny cartoon.<\/p>\n

\"Jeff<\/a>
Jeff Hiller knocks it out of the park as John Quincy Adams.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But the most transporting accomplishment of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson<\/em><\/strong> is the fact that, well before the end of the show, you realize that the main character of the play isn\u2019t really Andrew Jackson.\u00a0 It\u2019s us.\u00a0 Jackson is merely a stand-in for a nation of people who have always believed two things:\u00a0 1)\u00a0 We are the nice guy; the good guy; we believe in freedom and liberty; and 2) What we want, we REALLY want, and we\u2019re going to take it, no matter what.\u00a0 The sad truth underlying the gonzo humor of the show is that these two beliefs are, of course, mutually contradictory, which means that our proxy Jackson is, like us, both guilty and insane.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen a piece of theater that more devastatingly explored the American character than Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 I highly recommend you get to the Jacobs Theater posthaste and see it.<\/p>\n

Average Rating: 4.6<\/span> out of 5<\/span> based on 263<\/span> user reviews.<\/span><\/div><\/p>

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