There is always a certain reliability for rock and roll to play up the sounds of irreverence. It is like a cornerstone of grit, gutter, grime to add a layer of rock and roll in the narrative. It has been deployed to make Jesus Christ accessible, relevant, young, hip in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. Rock and Roll has been deployed to be transgressive, fluid, disruptive in the likes of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Picture. The transgression, relevance, disruption are called upon in Michael Friedman’s Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson recently staged by the TTU School of Theater and Dance. The problems with a complicated person and even more complicated history reverberating from Andrew Jackson being pigeonholed in musical theater can be daunting. Will this capture the breadth of his legacy? Will this explore themes that still resonate today? The problem with employing irreverence as an aesthetic direction is that there is a chance to caricaturize, ergo make diminutive the person and his crimes/glory. And maybe that was the point – that this ultimately bloody figure be made into a rollicking buffoonish swagger onstage to both (1) undermine his person as an act of satirical cutting down to size, (2) to undermine the bloody consequences of his actions that are now packaged as head-bopping songs instead of painful, deep introspection of examining America.
The production relied on irreverence for laughs like having the sound effects one would normally cull from Saturday morning cartoons to depict being shot by Native American arrows. There was a smattering of laughter with Washington DC political elite being depicted as overwrought, preening sissies thereby portraying the country mouse versus the city mouse, or in this case, the fey Northeast elite versus the grubby Fortier land dwellers. I thought that was tired and drawn out, and yet, it is very much played in the current political landscape of America – as well as that of in many “democracies” such as in the Philippines, Brazil wherein the central elite is overwrought and disconnected and they can only be swept away or have their swamp drained by an outsider – which is Andrew Jackson, or the many iterations of leaders that often cut corners that have problematic legacies. The production was filled with facial mugging, jerkiness of the body, often breaking the fourth wall, blood splatter, crotch grabbing – basically implements that one would not want to associate with a hagiography or, at the very least, a depiction in one’s monument. These tropes of irreverence are perfectly rendered in this production. Though the setting is specific but the details that pulsate around it are conflated, discordant, messy, complicated – very much like the America today. The whole cast’s look was bricolage in which you cannot tell which rock and roll era they belong to: is that an early naughts emo? Was that punk? Is her hair an homage to industrial rock? What’s a 70s disco ball doing in a barn? The collapse of the looks of the rock and roll eras very much add to the complication, conflation of discordance that is Andrew Jackson as a president. He wanted the country safe, but in order to do that, he had to resort to mass murder. He railed against the elitist of Washington DC and yet he is the architect of one of the world’s most oppressive internal dispersion of people which he saw as inferior and unable—nay, incapable to assimilate in the American way. Lead actor Luke Weber had jagged performance from a frenetic swagger of Mick Jagger to the rubbery facial tics of comedic Topher Grace (and that is quite a range, I have to say) – again very much into the discordant portrayal of Jackson. Pity the sound design of the production falls short as the band’s instruments were more than occasionally drowning the cast. I do not know if it is the youth of the cast or the general earnestness of their giddiness but it feels like they are merely appropriate in going through the motions of a mosh pit – all movement but no direction, and I say this because they are supposed to be intrinsic to the narrative and yet they fall away like disposable ornaments. It is like their irreverence is by the number, which is like listening to rock and roll as ambient music inside an elevator. Or, maybe, I am just that old person scoffing at the young.
But kudos to the production design. At the start of the musical there was a banter incorporated regarding TTU’s ongoing construction of the new theater and performance spaces. Was it by way of an apology that we have to watch this in a barn—and not just any barn, but a simulated one, which speaks of the simulation of presidency that is rustic, indecent inside a simulated space of the agricultural frontier. I thought it is an act of genius to be inside a barn to watch a musical about a president that is problematic. This time, irreverence as policy of personality politics. Isn’t this the same guy who let off a glaring and telling retort within the musical as he, Pres. Andrew Jackson as reflective of “America’s character?” The barn is not America’s character but a result of it. I thought it was sheer hilarity that we celebrate Jackson’s life in the National Ranch Heritage Center given the fact that ranches are the very result of imperious land-grabbing and the displacement and disenfranchisement of people by this person “Who put the ‘man’ in ‘manifest destiny!’” It goes without saying that this musical reflects America’s current unhinged populism. The opening salvo is basically an homage to American governmental policy with the lyrics dripping with bravado, initiative, go-getter version of entitlement: “From people like us who don't just think about things / People who make things happen / Sometimes with guns / Sometimes with speeches too / And also other things.” The call for “Make things happen” is tied to “Make America Great Again.”
My favorite part was the “Ten Little Indians” wherein the Indian was behind a screen and it was his shadow that enacted the horrors brought down upon them in song reminiscent of the nursery rhyme. This particular set is truly the centerpiece of American history intertwined with Jackson, in my opinion. It was as if the Native Americans really did not have a place, even onstage, but instead are relegated as shadows, or ghostly silhouettes, unformed and peripheral. Furthermore, many people’s initial introduction to Native American is counting these little “Indians” – a people and several cultures reduced to juvenile rhythmic numbers of containment. It was a short part but that was a brilliant encapsulation I see as what made America “great:” the systematic obliteration/reduction of people – be it in America or abroad.
I thought it was absolutely brilliant to go into the details of production design. At the base of the stage, there are three rugs: a cowhide, an “oriental rug” and a simulation woven hemp rug – I see these as visual short hands for American history and current events. The cowhide as the western expansion, the simulation woven hemp rug as the indigenous people’s culture and way of life, and the “oriental” rug as present-day America’s problem with Islam – and all three received the frenetic stomps, body slams, of the cast, dragging of and jabs by the feet – this is where America treads on. As the entire cast moves about tables, chairs to change the scenes onstage, these rugs stay still as the underlying, silent, foundational stage of America’s fast pace into history and into alacrity for unrelenting violence.