Not So Musical Monday: Hillary and Clinton

Spoiler alert: The following review contains mild spoilers for Hillary and Clinton, which is currently scheduled to run on Broadway through July 21.

Without knowing voting demographics or speaking in certainties, I feel pretty confident in guessing that the majority of people who see Hillary and Clinton will either currently or at some point previously have supported Bill and/or Hillary Clinton. They are arguably the most popular and polarizing couple in modern political history, but this play takes a look at the two not as figureheads or influential politicians but rather as individuals. Hillary and Clinton is a surprisingly funny play with strong performances, most notably by Laurie Metcalf as Hillary, but the modern political landscape makes the play feel more like a therapeutic experience than a moving piece of theater.

Laurie Metcalf begins the play by telling the crowd that if the universe is infinitely large, then we must assume there are infinite earths and realities. In some of these realities, Hillary becomes president. In others, she doesn’t. The play drops us into another one of these realities where Hillary is in New Hampshire during the 2008 Democratic Primaries. While the multiverse idea spoke directly to the comic book lover in me, the universe we’re dropped in is eerily similar to our exact universe. As Ms. Metcalf says the play takes place “on one of those other planet Earths that’s like this one but slightly different that there’s a woman named Hillary.”

We see Hillary dealing with her campaign manager, dealing with the polls, and dealing with her husband, Bill, played by John Lithgow. Mr. Lithgow and Ms. Metcalf have undeniable chemistry—not romantic chemistry in the sense of undying passion, but it is believable that Hillary both wants to murder Bill and also feels like she can’t be away from him.  Neither actor does an impression of the person they’re playing nor adopts any real mannerisms or speech patterns, which works really well for this purpose. We are able to focus on the relationship between the characters without thinking how closely they look or sound like the politicians we know. They have funny moments that had the whole theater laughing, and they had moments that showed pain. When Hillary tells Bill the polls suggest she’d be better off divorcing him, you feel the pain in his voice and the defeated frustration in hers.

This play was originally written in 2008 and staged in 2016 when it looked like Hillary Clinton was going to be the next president. I think seeing the play at either of those times would be an interesting experience. In our current political landscape, where the audience knows the frustration Hillary is feeling in 2008 tenfold and comments that Barack Obama makes later on about her time being next have a much more cryptic meaning than the character would’ve intended. It feels different. Every line hits with a different sting, and the play really seemed a cathartic experience for some people who are still asking themselves how 2016 went in such a different direction than they expected. This was only further strengthened by several audience members screaming an enthusiastic “yes!” at a few of Hillary’s more poignant shots at Bill, at the system, at the world.

We cannot go back and watch this play without the 2016 election happening. The play cannot exist in the same manner as it would have as art cannot exist in a vacuum. I’d like to see this play again in 5, 10, or 15 years where we can view the play with a different context. The play is well written, and Laurie Metcalf is great, but as it is, the discussion of what happened to Hillary Clinton has been discussed thoroughly, and this play doesn’t add anything new to the argument.