This isn’t going to be the prim and proper history lesson you tried to stay awake through in high school.
Plays & Players Theatre is partying like it’s 1829 with the Philadelphia premiere of the hit rock ‘n’ roll musical “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” through Feb. 3.
Featuring music and lyrics written by Michael Friedman, the show debuted in 2008 and ultimately made a splash on Broadway. It was nominated for the 2011 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and won the 2010 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Off-Broadway Musical. Plays & Players producing artistic director Daniel Student is overseeing the Philadelphia premiere.
Out cast member Brendan Norton explained the musical follows Jackson’s rise to power as the seventh president of the United States through an irreverently humorous lens.
“Most of the characters and things in the play are shockingly true,” Norton said. “Andrew Jackson was an unbelievable badass. It’s presented in a very Brechtian style. There’s a lot of ‘South Park’ vulgarity in it. The way we all talk to each other is very much with a modern vernacular. So in that I think it’s revisionist, but surprisingly most of the things that happened in Andrew Jackson’s life were true. His wife was married to two men at the same time. He was responsible for one of the biggest genocides in the country of Native Americans. In that respect, a lot of it is surprisingly true.”
Another out cast member, Sam Nagel, compared “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” to another rock musical.
“It is action and it is camp but I would equate to ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in the way it chronicles a historical figure’s rise to fame through rock music and kind of turns them into a rock star of their time,” she said. “It shows through rock music and a more modern twist how this historical figure won over the people and created a fan base. It tells that story with bias. It just shows it in a rock-star style and lets the audience choose their own opinion from there.”
Neither Norton nor Nagel plays Jackson but their characters are also historical figures whose impacts are up for interpretation.
“I play President James Monroe, who was the president directly before John Quincy Adams who was directly before Andrew Jackson,” Norton said. “I play the president in the early part of Jackson’s life right when he first gets to Washington and gets what Washington is all about. The founding fathers appear together throughout the show and kind of play this lager-than-life kind of foppish boy-band collection together.”
Nagel plays Henry Clay.
“He was a senator from Kentucky who ran for president against Andrew Jackson,” Nagel explained. “He’s described as a greasy corpse-like backwoods creep when in reality he was a great politician. In the show, they pander to the idea of rock stars having other rock stars trying to be just as good as them. All of these other politicians that were running against him at the time are painted in this really strange villainous light, which is a lot of fun to play with. Henry Clay weaseled his way into the position of Secretary of State. So I kind of portray him as a weasel and a snake. It’s a lot of fun.”
And when fun and history occupy the same creative space, chances are that someone will get uptight about it, especially if there is any irreverent bombast to it.
Both Norton and Nagel said the show has generated some controversy but that its heart is in the right place. “I know there have been issues in the past with Native American groups who thought the show was a little less than sensitive,” Norton said. “I think the way Native Americans are represented in the show is beautiful. It isn’t saccharine and it certainly isn’t appropriate, but none of the show is very appropriate. But it does handle it with a larger sense of responsibility that some of the other issues in the show. The Native Americans are always present and they have actual voices, and the play involves Andrew Jackson and an Indian chief discussing the forthcoming trail of tears. And by the end of the play you are devastated that this politician you love is responsible for killing thousands and thousands of people. I think we’ve been handling it with a lot of responsibility.”
“It’s very campy and very out there, all the while still staying true to Jackson’s story,” Nagel added. “And I don’t think it leans either way, liberal or conservative. It just paints a picture of this man and allows the audience to create an opinion from there and asks the question, Was he a great president? Was he a great person? Was he a terrible human being? It just puts it all out on the table, tells a story, and from there you can decide for yourself.”
Both actors agreed that audiences should be able to see parallels between the politics around the seventh presidential election and the politics of today.
“If you look at the election process in the 1820s and the election we just witnessed this year, they are strikingly similar,” Nagel said. “There are politicians tossing around jabs and insults just as freely as they do now, if not more so. Andrew Jackson’s popularity among the American people is not unlike Obama’s popularity now. Even though the show was written during George W. Bush’s presidency, I think it still rings true, more so now during Obama’s presidency. Parts of our show are so current to the political climate today.”
“The first song of the show is called ‘Populism, Yea! Yea!,” Norton added. “It’s all about the will of the people and how Jackson really did succeed by trying to connect with the common man. He was the president that everyone said they’d most like to have a beer with. The feel of Andrew Jackson is a more Obama-type feel. There’s a fervor to him among the common people and non-elite of the country.”
Norton also said that, like today’s political climate, the show should be electrifying to audiences.
“That’s going to be one of the exciting parts,” he said. “I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of audience interaction but we play a lot to the audience. We speak a lot to them. There’s a lot of action that wants to leap out. There’s a lot of gun work in the show and during the last number, we point those guns out to the top of the house. The audience is going to be very much drawn into the show. It’s very active.”
Plays & Players Theatre presents “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” through Feb. 3 at 1714 Delancey Place. For more information or tickets, visit www.playsandplayers.org or call 800-595-4849.