Coming up! design by Lauren Helpern, Graham Kindred, Jill BC DuBoff, Josh Higgason, Amelia Dombrowski, Eugenia Furneaux-Arendf psm Ryan Raduechel* assoc. prod mngr/asm Laura Jane Collins NOVEMBER 22 TO DECEMBER 20 THE LIVING THEATRE 21 Clinton Street $20 tickets 212.868.4444 or www.smarttix.com Simply show proof of purchase to HILLARY and get 20% off your total bill at our partner restaurants on Clinton: SALT BAR * 29a Clinton Street * 212.979.8471 * saltnyc.com SAVOR NY * 63 Clinton Street * 212.358.7125 * savornyrestaurant.com
WHO ELSE? But in this day and age, just try saying the words Politics and Theater in the same sentence. Try it at a party, “Hey, there's some great political theater happening in Bushwick.” Talk about a buzzkill. Few people will lean in and say, “REALLY? Where in Bushwick?” Perhaps this is because the few attempts to marry politics to theater in recent times have resulted in the kind of experience that leaves us feeling ennobled or as though we've just swallowed a dose of medicine — even when we haven't actually attended the play. So imagine my surprise when I first read Wendy Weiner's play and discovered that she had succeeded in turning the political personal and the personal political while making me laugh out loud. Even the title had me leaning in and tittering — Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending . How else could such a monumental character like Hillary Clinton be examined except through the lens of those ancient Greeks, a tribe of people who understood better than anyone the use of a mask and the personal cost of political ambition? And who else but someone as bitterly funny and as optimistically irreverent as Wendy Weiner could illuminate for us one of our most outstanding contemporary Americans? But Wendy has done more than just give us a ninety-minute opportunity to think about Hillary the person; she has also done the thing that only theater can do — she has made the onstage character of Hillary seem more complete, touching, hilarious, tragic and also more alive than the Hillary we are able to perceive through the all-too-public lens of the media. She has also forced us to look at ourselves and at a few of the things we might have given up while trying to achieve our personal best. Last December, just as the primaries were ramping up, I attended a workshop of the play, and I remember coming away with the feeling that this was just the tonic we were going to need during an election year — theater that is sincere and irreverent in equal measure, theater that can entertain as well as enlighten, provoke as well as please. A big Greek Hurrah to New Georges for staging this wonderful new work by Wendy Weiner. I for one can't wait to hear the actors sing about the days of the great Hillary and watch the chorus go like this with their hands and cry “Wah! Wah!” James Lecesne is a writer and an actor living in New York City . His novel ABSOLUTE BRIGHTNESS was published by Harper Collins this year.
And stay tuned for spring 2009, when New Georges presents |