(Warning: This review contains explicit language and plenty of pop culture references)
Musical theatre old timers have been circling the proverbial wagons for quite sometime now, grasping at revival after revival in hopes of retaining the fading glory of yesteryear song and dance shows. Over the course of the past couple seasons on and off Broadway, a rebellion of sorts has been afoot, and if anyone has been paying attention to the smoke signals, musical theatre conventions are slowly being thrown out the window.
Center Theatre Group's latest musical,
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, has a central message, and it is rather simple, fuck theatrical conventions. Thanks to the progressive nature of recent offerings including
Spring Awakening and the soon to open
Passing Strange, Broadway has been breaking away from tradition with rock music infiltrating the stage and concert style staging springing up.
Let's face it, the age of the Merm (that's reigning musical theatre queen
Ethel Merman for those unaffected youths) has been gone for quite some time now, but the final nail is nearly in the coffin, and
Andrew Jackson is yet another step towards a new wave of the American musical. If only its creators had worked a little harder to avoid the occasional appearance of a high school production, with slightly off-key singers and corny jokes that don't know exactly when to quit.
Yet, the intentions of
Andrew Jackson are pure, and as such allow for the primal scream of musical theatre's next generation to be heard loud and clear. Quit filling stages with the same old crap year after year, hoping that a bunch of nostalgic old farts will keep the industry afloat, because sooner or later, it is the key 18-35 demographic that will need to fill seats, and an over-the-hill
Gypsy will not pass muster.
So just what is
Andrew Jackson? Well, for starters, it isn't your grandmothers, or for that matter, mother's musical. It is a culmination of years of newsgathering from sources like "The Daily Show with
John Stewart" and "Real Time with
Bill Maher," coupled with the wailing moans of Weezer and Dashboard Confessional (emo rock bands).
While the story of America's seventh President, Andrew Jackson, is vaguely taught in today's increasingly shoddy public school systems, this new musical sets out to retell his story through the eyes of teen angst, imagining the "last of the founding fathers" as a really pissed off guy who waged war on American Indians, the British, and just about anyone else who looked at him the wrong way, including George Washington and the rest of the good ol' boys running the country.
President Jackson, like many modern twenty-somethings, was a true outsider in politics, fighting to breach the gap between elitist lawmakers and the common man. This new musical's opening number, "Populism, Yea, Yea," is a catchy rock tune laying the groundwork for the journey ahead, full of schizophrenic choreography and Jackson's (
Benjamin Walker) yearning need for change.
Over the course of the fast-paced intermissionless production, President Jackson's history is pretty accurately addressed, covering his childhood and ending during his showdown with the establishment as he struggles to appease his adoring and quite often oblivious public and avoid the complete chaos that often comes with consistently relying on public opinion polls.
Director-writer Alex Timbers and
Michael Friedman (music and lyrics) craft a mash-up of sorts, throwing in a handful of music forms and plenty of wink and nod humor, delivered with a Stephen Colbert dry wit from the motley ensemble of actors. Timbers, as if giving a big fuck you to the establishment, has even incorporated a disabled Man in Chair character (from another CTG world-premiere musical,
The Drowsy Chaperone), wryly played by Taylor Wilcox, who gets shot through the head during one of her corny narrations. After all, there's no shameless kiss ass behavior allowed in musical theatre, at least not after
Andrew Jackson is done with it.
And while Friedman's music is full of promise, there is no escaping the fact that this is no
Spring Awakening, nor is there getting around the fact that the blatant staging (actors whipping handheld microphones out of their pockets and
Bill T. Jones knockoff choreography by
Kelly Devine) instantly draws such a comparison. Where the current Broadway smash has
Duncan Sheik's gorgeous music to fall back on,
Andrew Jackson remains scattershot at best. To its creators' credit, this book fends off being taken too seriously, like its Comedy Central forefathers, while still getting the point across and hopefully absorbed.
Andrew Jackson brings to mind the hilarious antics of Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatre, recollecting a premise thought up by a bunch of drunk fraternity guys looking for a couple of laughs, ala "Animal House" with a little more singing and dancing. As such, its humor does begin to wear thin, and nearly three quarters of the way through falls victim to the exact art form it is ridiculing, with the title character losing all sense of wit and devolving into a depressive mope.
All is forgiven, however, as
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is both vibrant and refreshing, giving a much needed facelift to musical theatre. And with a little finessing, there is bound to be a future for this revolutionary production.
Cast includes
Anjali Bhimani, Will Collyer,
Diane Davis, Zack DeZon, Erin Felgar, Kristin Findley, Jimmy Fowlie, Patrick Gomez, Sebastian Gonzalez, Will Greenberg, Greg Hildreth, Brian Hostenske, Adam O'Byrne, Matthew Rocheleau, Ben Steinfeld, Ian Unterman,
Benjamin Walker and Taylor Wilcox.
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson runs through February 17th and tickets are available by calling 213-628-2772, on-line at
CenterTheatreGroup.org, in person at the Center Theatre Group box office (at the Ahmanson Theatre at the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles) or at the Kirk Douglas Theatre box office, located at 9820 Washington Blvd. in Culver City, two hours prior to performances.
Photos by Craig Schwartz. (1-3) Benjamin Walker and cast.
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