THEATER REVIEW
“Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson”
Produced by: Smithtown Performing Arts Council
Reviewed by: Jeb Ladouceur
This musical about (of all things) the nation’s seventh president, opened at New York’s Bernard Jacobs Theater on October 13, 2010 and closed a scant 2 ½ month later due to poor attendance. That in itself is not a total indictment—lots of shows flop on The Great White Way—but “Grease” it ain’t. That record-setting staple arrives in town next month.
As experimental rock operas go, “Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson” is pretty typical fare, thus one wonders what the production is doing on the Smithtown Performing Arts stage when it could as easily have been cleaned up and presented at one of our local high schools. Could it be that our kids’ taste is improving?
Implausibly, Alex Timbers’ overstuffed book for “Bloody…” was nominated for awards in a couple of categories during its brief run, but the theatergoing public wasn’t buying it, and with good reason. This is the sort of story one envisions a wiseguy student writing to get even with a History teacher who has assigned the class a paper on the Jackson presidency.
Granted, the play has its serious moments, but they are few and ineffective. Not that the ambitious guy in the title role doesn’t give it his best shot: Young Jack Weppler tries to make a convincing case while castigating Native Americans with assorted ‘F-bombs’ and ‘S-bombs’ for example, but his pitch would have been better snarled than shouted. The trouble is, Weppler is so convinced of the magnificence of his delivery that he constantly pats himself on the back even before the lines have left his mouth.
Such miscalculations must be laid at the door of Director Ken Washington. It’s hard to believe that an old pro like him doesn’t know when an actor is flat out talking too fast.
Short of re-writing the script, there’s not much Washington could have done about this play’s potty-mouth jokes, I suppose, but he could have cut Weppler’s ill-advised line addressed at an Indian Chief, “Your music is terrible!” That about sums up the whole ‘Bloody’score.
Similarly, the choreography in this show is non-existent, though the vocal contributions of the actors playing Martin Van Buren, John C. Calhoun, and Henry Clay are so-so. The same may be said for those of Jackson’s heartbroken wife Rachel, performed by Cai Radleigh.
Unhappily (or maybe not), the drums frequently drowned out the vocals in Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson … also, one wonders what this bunch of kids did for stage business before POTUS and FLOTUS popularized the presidential fist bump. This is the eighteen hundreds, folks.
Notes on my playbill: Before this rock opera is over, we might end up ruing the day Les Paul ever invented the electric guitar.
Fear not, theater lovers, a real musical (“Grease”) is on the way in July. And you won’t find those smutty F & S bombs there.
Award-winning Smithtown author Jeb Ladouceur has published seven novels. His theater reviews appear in dozens of L. I. newspapers. In Ladouceur’s next thriller, “The Dealer” due this summer, Israeli extortionists threaten to destroy Hoover Dam demolishing the Las Vegas Strip - if casino operators don’t pay millions.