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Reviewed by:
  • Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
  • Claudia Wilsch Case
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Book by Alex Timbers. Music and lyrics by Michael Friedman. Directed by Alex Timbers. Public Theater, Newman Theater, New York City. 27 March 2010.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a satirical rock musical by New York's Les Frères Corbusier about the life of America's seventh president, was a recent manifestation of this young company's brilliantly silly assaults on the heroes, villains, and clowns of American history. In addition to roasting American statesmen, something the group has done since its early days with The Franklin Thesis (2002), and, most recently, Hoover Comes Alive! (2009), Les Frères has skewered the spiritual oeuvre of L. Ron Hubbard in A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant (2006) and mocked the architectural ambitions of Robert Moses in Boozy (2005).

With Bloody Bloody, Les Frères toyed with the genre of the history play to deconstruct the legacy of an American president once esteemed for his role in consolidating the territory of the United States while simultaneously staking out its own territorial claim as a preeminent member of America's new theatrical avant-garde. The troupe accomplished its subversive mission through clever, often campy artistic choices commenting on the work of historical and contemporary innovators, including Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, and Richard Foreman, and managed to draw subtle parallels between Jackson and more recent American presidents, infusing this production with a timely yet restrained commentary on current American politics.

With a tongue-in-cheek nod to nineteenth-century stage conventions and, by extension, to Foreman's appropriation of melodrama, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson opened with a tableau: Jackson, played by Benjamin Walker, dressed in black skinny jeans and a fitted, white long-sleeve undershirt, posed on Donyale Werle's mathematically cluttered set in front of a group of scowling actors in period-inspired costumes by Emily Rebholz. So began Alex Timbers's reinvention of Jackson's peculiar populism: Jackson's first move was to address the audience, oozing erotic charisma that, according to Timbers's script and direction, had as much to do with his election as did his crusade to wrest territory from the Spanish and British, and, most significantly, from Native Americans. "You guys are sexy as shit," Jackson told the spectators. "I'm going to put it in you."

With the help of the ensemble, Jackson then switched focus to his political agenda. As Justin Townsend's Artaudian lights flashed blindingly from the stage, the actors broke into the opening number, "Populism, Yea, Yea," an aggressive ode to Jacksonian democracy and American nationalism. While composer/lyricist Michael Friedman's score shifted from energetic rock to folksy ballad, supporting the moods of individual scenes, the dominant musical style was a parody of "emo"—short for "emotional hardcore" rock, which expresses themes of teenage alienation. Like Spring Awakening, this is a musical about growing pains, with Jackson a symbol of America's adolescence. As an outsider to the Washington aristocracy, portrayed here as a tight cluster of "doily-wearing muffin tops," Jackson had to fight to obtain political power.

Les Frères dramatized Jackson's struggle in an epic series of cartoonish vignettes, introduced by a Brechtian narrator. Although the narrator, a bespectacled matron in a teddy-bear sweater (Colleen Werthmann), was too much of an adoring fan to remain objective, Timbers used her to examine Jackson's legacy critically, and to ask whether Jackson's policies toward Native Americans made him "an American Hitler." Granted the ability to see and respond to the narrator, Jackson shot her in a futile attempt to fight off critical interpretation. Rather than ceding control to Jackson, members of the ensemble and the band filled in as narrators until the main storyteller returned, first as a bleeding survivor who warned, "You can't shoot history in the neck," and later as a glittery angel who surprised Jackson with the news that he has become unpopular, and that posterity might not see him as the hero he hoped to be.

The production, which was notable for its melding of theatrical innovation with a camp sensibility, also read as one of the first...

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