Review - Hillary and Clinton

In my quest to be a Lucas Hnath play completist, I went to see the Broadway production of Hillary and Clinton last night.  I will just say up front that this was one of the worst theater audiences I have ever been trapped in a room with - between the getting up to go to and coming back from the bathroom, phones ringing, chirping, and vibrating all over the place, and coughers galore, it was really hard to stay focused on the play.  I mainly enjoyed myself, because I think Laurie Metcalf is giving an amazing performance, but I also felt a little unsatisfied by the end of the 82-minute piece.  Well, maybe not unsatisfied, exactly, but...hm.  Let's see if I can figure it out.

The play begins with Laurie Metcalf walking downstage and reaching for a microphone in a microphone stand.  The stand is empty and Metcalf gives us an exasperated look.  She now already has us in the palm of her hand and on her side.  She goes off to the wings and picks up a hand microphone and starts to tell us a story of the universe and probability.  She tells us to imagine there are infinite numbers of planet earths in the universe and that on one of those planet earths, there might be a woman named Hillary who might be running for president.  Maybe.  And the rest of the show begins.  We're then in a hotel room in New Hampshire in 2008, in the midst of Hillary's presidential campaign.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

Metcalf's Hillary is frustrated, passionate, and blunt.  She came in third in the previous Iowa caucus and she's sure she's going to lose the New Hampshire primary, so she does what her pollster Mark (a very funny Zak Orth) tells her not to do: she calls in Bill, played with sly hangdog perfection by John Lithgow.  The play, with the campaign as a backdrop, is actually more a play about a dysfunctional marriage.  It allows all of us to become voyeurs into a marriage we've been curious about for years - why does she stay?  Why does he?  When Bill says that together they're a force, you can see Hillary wince yet acquiesce.  Their relationship is beautifully constructed by both Metcalf and Lithgow.  They come together, they pull apart, they push each other away - it's all the ordinary stuff of a troubled marriage placed in a heightened situation of these two abnormally famous people.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

The fourth character in the play is a political rival known only as Barack, and he is beautifully played by Peter Francis James.  He has the intelligence, the innate kindness, but the savvy to stand up to these two powerhouses.  The scene between the three of them, when the power shifts back and forth, is really the best scene in the play.  With hindsight, the scenarios Hnath presents are breathtaking (I don't want to give stuff away, even though the situations are mainly fictional).

There was so much dialogue that punched me in the gut (those final lines were killers), though I will also say that it was isolated and I don't know that everything coalesced into a successful play.  The characters were well-sketched, the dialogue was good, the acting was fantastic, but...I don't that it added up to much.  Maybe more of a montage of a marriage than a play.  I'm unsure of how to describe my feelings.  Since I'm already on the side of Hillary Clinton, what was this supposed to show me?  And if someone came into the theater with no knowledge of the Clintons (I know, it's hard to imagine, but still)?  I can't imagine what this play would mean to them.

photo credit: Julieta Cervantes

I guess I was vaguely disappointed because I go to a Lucas Hnath play for thrilling discussions and dissections of ideas.  I didn't really get that here, more of sketches of characters which some killer dialogue now and again.  Which, I guess, is my problem of incorrect expectations, but I couldn't help feeling that one more draft would've sharpened this script even more.  Again, it's probably my problem and not his.  Maybe the fact that the play illustrates an idea and that the idea of Hillary being president is discussed here could be the way I should point my brain.  But I will say that Laurie Metcalf is beyond brilliant and she is totally my choice to win the Tony, which would be her third in a row.  That would be quite a feat.  And Hillary has to win something, for the love of all that's holy.

Oh, I also want to mention the use of the hand mic.  It comes back several times throughout the play, when Hillary is giving narration to move a scene along.  I've seen Hnath use that technique before, to perhaps separate what the play is saying from what the character is saying.  It was used beautifully in his plays A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney and The Christians; as a whole, I enjoyed both of those plays much more than I enjoyed Hillary and Clinton.  So I'm glad I saw this one because I do enjoy spending time in a Hnath world, though I don't think this particular world is one where I'd choose to return - I normally like to check out his plays more than once to fully enjoy my experience.  Here, maybe once was enough.  Good thing he has a new play coming to Playwrights Horizons next season; I look forward to checking that one out!  Though I guess I would pay good money to see Hillary and Laurie Metcalf in a room together.  Hmmmm...