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Hillary And Clinton Broadway Review: Laurie Metcalf, John Lithgow Are Winning Ticket We Hardly Knew

Lucas Hnaths Hillary and Clinton boasts the gladdening sight of Laurie Metcalf, her every bit the equal John Lithgow and director Joe Mantellos unfailing grace, but for all of that, no small part of the satisfaction this play delivers is recognition of an entirely different sort. Yes, youre likely to think at least once or maybe many times during these 90 minutes, thats just what I suspected… Though if youre being honest with yourself, youll add, …but with considerably less wit, intellectual nuance and deep, unexpected compassion.

The premise: Hillary and Clinton peers behind the closed doors of both a marriage and a nations political machinery. If youve ever wondered what on earth those two people talk about when no one else is looking – and, surely, you have – well, so has Hnath (A Dolls House, Part 2), and his play, opening tonight on Broadway at the Golden Theatre, presents his imaginings.

First, though, that title: a declaration of independence and an acknowledgement of an inextricable bond. Hillary stands alone, no need for a last name but trailed by one nonetheless.

And whats worse, shes stuck with forces not even named. If Hillary and Clinton was a musical composition, Donald Trump would be its ghost note, unplayed but heard all the same.

Hnath, whose A Dolls House, Part 2 won Metcalf a 2017 Tony Award, set to work on Hillary and Clinton back in 2015 when Hillarys destiny still included the White House. The play chronicles a couple days in the 2008 presidential campaign, when she was staring down two threats: One from the past, one from the future. (The play owes a spiritual, if not entirely structural, debt to Tru, Jay Presson Allens 1989 trapped-in-a-room tale of Truman Capote in extremis).

Exactly what past, and whose future, is being depicted here, though, is a bit tricky. The play begins – house lights up – with Metcalf taking the stage, mic in hand, to introduce herself as an actress who will be playing a sort of alternate-universe Hillary. What unfolds over the next 90 minutes has an undeniable ring of truth, and almost certainly didnt happen quite this way, at least not in our particular universe.

Laurie Metcalf, Zak Orth

The setting is a hotel room in the state of New Hampshire, a room so bland it fools at least one temporary occupant into thinking hed visited long before it was actually built. A panicked Hillary is conferring with her campaign manager Mark (Zak Orth) over whats to be done about the miserable state of affairs, financial and otherwise, that is her campaign. A newcomer named Barack – like Hillary, no last name needed – is upsetting a trajectory that was all but assured. Meanwhile that old dog named Bill, pointedly uninvited (until he isnt) to help with the campaign, hovers over everything like a raincloud that wont blow away.

Mark begs Hillary not to do what he knows she will: Call Bill for help, for advice, for money. She promises she wont, then promptly does. Habit? Affection? Or just knowing what needs to be done, damn all else? No matter: Bill arrives late at night, rumpled, alone, a dejected and pompous bundle of self-pity, hubris and undeniable likability. The play hits lift-off.

As the two (and sometimes three, with Mark and then Barack dropping by) hash out what is to be done, the conversation goes where we know it will: Like Donald Trump, Monica Lewinskys name is never spoken, but, wow, is she present.

Truths – as imagined by Hnath and so many of us – get spoken: Hillary is, and always was, the brains behind this political duo, and Bill the personality. He knows, and maybe she does, why her campaign is faltering: Bill is all but champing at the bit to tell his wife that she, or at least her public version, isnt much liked by people, shes stiff and weird on TV, she has no relatable “story.”

Ah, but she does. Bill is her story, the albatross that follows her every rise and fall, stashed away back home or not. Hillary, she herself knows, will forever be the woman so full of political ambition that she stood by the man who humiliated her on aRead More – Source

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