Following a successful run in the United States, a vibrant stage production reimagining American political history as a rollicking musical has arrived in Australia. It’s called Clinton: The Musical, and until Hamilton makes it to our shores, it will have to do.
That’s not to say this is a lowly consolation prize. Bulging with racy, crowd-pleasing gags and mostly memorable show tunes, Clinton: The Musical offers welcome respite from that other sideshow: the current US election campaign.
The curtain rises on a tableau that will delight its presumably left-leaning audience and terrorise any masochistic Republicans scattered among them: the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, reclining in the Oval Office, cigar in hand, unfazed by decades of public tumult.
Tumult, it is suggested, is what helped her run – so successfully she can almost taste it – for president in 2016.
In the two hours that follow, we learn what led HRC to her Cersei-like state (an evolution actress Lisa Adam devours with her vigorous, hilarious performance) – specifically, her husband, Bill, getting caught conducting an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky while serving as 42nd president. Remember that?
This is a play concerned with the infamous hardening of a Clinton (just not the Clinton we usually think of when we think of that word). And while Hillary’s rise may be presented as merely a consequence of Bill’s betrayal, no one leaving the theatre will be unclear about who pulls the strings in the relationship.
Australian playwrights Michael and Paul Hodge deconstruct the contradictions of William Jefferson Clinton by dividing him into two separate characters, with the positively presidential WJ (Simon Burke) at odds with his sunglasses-wearing, sax-playing, dress-ruining alter ego, Billy (Matt Dyktynski). They share the stage and argue, despite none of the other characters – save HRC – ever seeing the split personality at work.
The show, directed in Australia by Adam Mitchell, is making its Antipodean debut in Perth, having premiered at the Edinburgh fringe festival in 2012 before being refined for an off-Broadway staging in New York. Minor edits have been made since its original airing to rightfully paint the recently minted Democratic nominee as the truly deserving presidential contender of the family. (Donald Trump even gets a silent cameo, as one half of a telephone call, urging Hillary to one day run for office. She returns the compliment. Oh, dramatic irony!)
The musical’s underground origins are apparent, not just in the giddiness of its cheekily crass numbers (case in point: Monica’s Song, better remembered by its refrain, “I’m fucking the fucking president”), but also in the broadness of its humour, which sometimes – OK, often – veers into pantomime.
Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who toiled tirelessly to have Bill Clinton impeached, is portrayed by Brendan Hanson as a moustache-twirling schemer in arseless chaps. (The surprising reveal of the latter provides a legitimate show-stopping moment.) Luke Hewitt plays Newt Gingrich as a simpleton, forever under Starr’s thumb.
The other two members of the cast, Megan Kozak and Clare Moore, pull out all the stops in a variety of roles. Kozak impresses as Monica Lewinsky, an innocent caught in a melee, while Moore takes on Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, Callista Gingrich and, supernaturally, Eleanor Roosevelt. The show ultimately belongs to its trio of female performers.
The set, adorned with stars and stripes, is otherwise sparse, with all the action occurring on a rotating platform beneath a makeshift Capitol dome. (A cardboard cutout of Al Gore oversees proceedings from stage left. He’s recyclable, we’re told. “He would have wanted it that way,” one of the Bills insists.) A small live band led by musical director David Young sits just inside the dome, atop the unfolding drama. Its intimate omnipresence is an effective compromise between nightclub cabaret and high-end theatrical accompaniment.
Clinton: The Musical is mostly concerned with turning double entendres and damning historical quotes into earworms, and it’s more than successful there. (Slick Willy’s excuses – “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and “It depends upon what your definition of ‘is’ is” – are as anticipated by the audience as if they were Free Bird.) The Hodges are not gentle with the Clintons either, for those wary of hagiographies. (Hillary awakens from a nap, startled, screaming, “Shred everything!”)
Though over the top, the play still seeks to get to the heart of modern politics’ most fascinating marriage (excluding the Weiner-Abedin impasse) with empathy, some psychological inquiry and, most importantly, ribald eroticism. There may be no better entry point to understanding their partnership than the Act One closer Both Ways, in which the Bills are serenaded by a bargaining Hillary, who’s eager to save their reputation by way of a political ménage à trois.
Now this, Donald Trump would agree, is art.
Clinton: The Musical is on at the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia until 11 September
