I can’t get enough of the Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson play that opened on Broadway last week. Two reviews have me even more intrigued. From the Associated Press:
Jackson’s story is told in a series of vignettes and songs that veer from fratboy humor — girl-on-girl kissing, fist-bumping, ballet-dancing Indians — to slightly more sophisticated observations, such as the lines, “Direct democracy is lame” and “I’m sure Michel Foucault would have an opinion, but he hasn’t been born yet.”
There’s a schoolmarmish narrator (Kristine Nielsen), who appears in a motorized wheelchair wearing a truly horrible sweater with cuddly cats. She’s a history nerd who eagerly recites Jacksonian dates and context — until, that is, Jackson shoots her in the throat.
. . . .
The Washington insiders come off worse, including such luminaries as a Twinkie-eating Martin Van Buren (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe), a weasel-wielding Henry Clay (Bryce Pinkham) and a foppish John Quincy Adams (Jeff Hiller).
A Twinkie-eating Martin Van Buren? What would the Van Buren Boys say?
From USA Today:
And this unabashedly anachronistic musical doesn’t just aim to mock Jackson’s proto-libertarian views and followers — or, by implication, their generally right-leaning successors. True, leading man Benjamin Walker’s Jackson is introduced as a crude, if charismatic, blowhard, his crowd as similarly rowdy and lowbrow. In the post-punk diatribe Populism Yea Yea, they vow to take “a stand against the elite,” not to mention a laundry list of foreigners.
My Christmas wish is that this play goes on the road and plays at a nearby venue.
Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics 