Hillary and Clinton wins the race

Julieta Cervantes

We see a stage. We see a set that is pushed upstage, exposing the wings and the back wall. We see the light grid above and the work lights to the sides. The play will begin soon and it is clear, from what we see, that the playwright and the director want us to know it is a play. No realism will be seen tonight, for this is theatre. Without benefit of house lights dimming and an official start to the evening, a woman in sweats and comfortable footwear walks onstage from the wings and downstage to a mic stand where she notices, with bemused frustration, that there is no mic, leading her across the stage and into the wings, where she must find a mic herself, then return to speak to us, finally, a woman with a voice.

Hillary and Clinton has begun.

The new play by Lucas Hnath, whose last outing A Doll’s House Part 2 garnered him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Play of 2017, relies entirely on the imaginations of his audience and the performances of his actors. A wagon carrying Chloe Lamford’s set, a stark, bare hotel room with two doors, a chair and a minibar, rolls downstage and fills the proscenium arch so that Hillary and Co. can carry on a series of heated conversations about her Presidential race in 2008. These conversations take place between her and Mark, her campaign manager, her husband Bill, and a competitor in the race, a man named Barack. Mind you, these are not the Hillary, Bill and Barack we all know because, before the action starts, Hillary makes sure that we know that these are just people in a parallel universe, rumination in her mind. Hillary spends some time before the action talking into the microphone and flipping a coin, while speculating whether or not there is an existential possibility of multiple realities in multiple universes, before turning our attention to the hotel room where exists a totally random woman named Hillary in a totally random alternate universe running for President of the United States.

It’s an interesting premise, the one that Hnath has created with Hillary and Clinton. It features all the things that make a successful venture into a theatre: dialogue that flows naturally, intelligence, humor, good acting – dare I even say great, brevity (the play is a 90 minute one act) and an interesting premise. It is a thoroughly enjoyable trip to the theatre.

But Hillary and Clinton is not a play.

I want to be clear: I loved Hillary and Clinton. It took me a while to get to the Golden Theatre to see the play because I am not drawn to politically themed theatre, as my brain is not wired to understand political jargon and I can find myself struggling to keep up. As the days turned into weeks, then months, there was a nagging feeling inside that I should not miss seeing Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow onstage, a tragedy if ever there was one, and one that has befallen me in the past. So I decided to suck up and suffer and try to keep up, so I arranged a trip to 45th Street. It turns out I did not have to keep up. Hnath has written Hillary and Clinton in a way that is amiable and easy for people like me who are confused by politics, math, science, and how contestants on the TV show Survivor navigate strategies. Never, at any time, was I lost and frustrated in my seat, a tribute to the playwright and the performers. Well, maybe I was a little frustrated because throughout the play the characters rather trash the austere hotel room set, throwing props and clothing everywhere and this more than slightly OCD person was desperate to get up out of his chair and go tidy it up, but it didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the show, which actually made me feel smarter than I usually do, thanks to the fact I was able to follow the dialogue, most of which was not political. Plenty of it was, don’t get me wrong, but mostly the conversation in Hillary and Clinton was about relationships and needs. What was the relationship between each of the characters? What did each of them need? In good storytelling, it all begins and ends with what every person in the story needs and what they are willing to do to get it. Hillary and Clinton is ALL about what four people need, and that makes their quest, their journey interesting.

Julieta Cervantes

Few actors do need as well as Laurie Metcalf. There is a ruthlessness to the way that the two time Tony Award recipient represents Hillary’s desires, not just the desire to be President, but the desire to be acknowledged, to be taken seriously, to be seen. After all, that’s all any of us wants – to be visible. Hnath provides Metcalf with ample opportunities to bring forth the emotional wheelhouse of a woman defiantly desperate to stand on her own two feet against the insurmountable odds created by a bumbling husband who is constantly in her way, a truculent campaign manager (the wonderful Zak Orth) who locks horns with her at most turns, and a staunch competitor with unsuspected underhandedness (a pleasant Peter Francis James). In Hillary and Clinton, it’s a Boys’ Club, just like it is in life, and this female protagonist is treading water, trying to find a way to beat the bastards, with no buoy in sight. This play is no metaphor for the struggles a woman faces in a man’s world, it is an accurate representation of that fight, with a big white light on it and Metcalf’s Hillary is scratching, clawing, fighting, biting, punching, kicking her way up a hill that we know she will never win. It is an emotionally charged performance with the focus of a sharpshooter. To see this great American actress in action is a true privilege.

On the topic of great American actors, Metcalf is evenly matched by the towering Lithgow. The man has little else to do than simply stand in the doorway of the fictional hotel room to elicit a laugh. He is a born entertainer, able to communicate to the audience his character’s every wish, whether verbally or facially. The twice Tony bestowed Lithgow is well known for the comedic skills that made Third Rock from the Sun a hit TV show but it is in his quieter moments that he becomes sympathetic to the audience. Willing to do anything for a laugh (the running shorts, oh my gosh), Lithgow drops all the comedy and reaches into our hearts with the simple question ‘Can I touch you?’ and we see a couple who, even when at odds, is a real couple, a living, breathing organism that needs an error margin. Those moments of truth for the husband and wife team of political animals are brief because Metcalf’s predominant emotion in the play is based in anger, while Lithgow’s predominant purpose in the play is comedy – a perfect balancing act, keeping the audience attentive, at times aggressively so.

But Hillary and Clinton is not a play.

Hillary and Clinton is wonderful. It is a thin piece of theatre where an audience gets to watch two great American actors shine. It is a ninety-minute orgy of words constructed in a manner perfect enough for people listening to enjoy listening. It is a roller coaster ride of emotions that audiences will be happy are not their emotions. It is a clever conceit and an intelligent concept. There is, though, no story. There is no arc. There is no resolution. We are permitted to look through a window into a parallel universe where a woman fighting an unwinnable fight knows that at the beginning and knows it at the end. Nobody in Hillary and Clinton changes from start to finish. We simply watch four people talk for ninety minutes about something that cannot be changed, and that isn’t changed. They and we have taken an enjoyable journey to nowhere. It’s like going to a musical and discovering that it’s a song cycle. The question is: is Hillary and Clinton a good enough song cycle to make you overlook that it’s a song cycle and not a musical?

The answer is yes. It is.

Hillary and Clinton runs about 90 minutes with no intermission.