Want to escape the 24-hour news cycle for a little while? Then head to the Public Theater, where Hillary Clinton tap-dances and twerks, and a gun-toting chorus sings “Make America Great Again!”
OK, maybe try “Stomp” instead.
David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s perplexing new musical “Soft Power” attempts to do three things at once: tell the real story of a 2015 stabbing attack on Hwang; do a “The King and I”-like turn that both romanticizes and criticizes a stereotypical America; and opine on the 2016 presidential election. There is an intermission, and the Public Theater has two bars. Start a tab.
No one part is fully formed or committed to, and the show aims to compensate for its lack of focus by being bonkers. Look no further than Clinton (Alyse Alan Louis) doing an “Anything Goes”-style dance number in an opulent, glittering McDonald’s.
Sorting through the plot is like untangling a box of knotty cables. It begins with a meeting between Hwang (Francis Jue) and a Shanghai-based entertainment executive named Xūe Xíng (Conrad Ricamora), who wants him to write a musical for Chinese tastes. The pair end up at a Hillary Clinton presidential fund-raiser at Lincoln Center, where “The King and I” is playing. Shortly after, Hwang is stabbed in the neck in Fort Greene, and falls unconscious.
Faster than you can yell “Auntie Em!”, the set grandly moves in director Leigh Silverman’s staging, revealing a huge red and gold space with a large orchestra against the back wall. Now, we’re at what looks like a Golden Age musical — starring Hillary. The question is: Do we want to be?
The first act of the dreamy show-within-a-show sees Clinton begging for votes, attempting to dazzle citizens and desperately trying to relate. That’s when she has that big production number at that ritziest of restaurants: McDonald’s. Hwang seems to say that classic American musicals spread falsehoods about foreign countries and get celebrated for it. “Soft Power” would be much better off if it homed in on those cultural slights, instead of tackling 1,000 other heady ideas.
During the second act, we learn it is the 50th anniversary of this 2016-election musical and that the US went to war with China under the president who defeated Clinton (Trump is never named). Dejected, Hillary turns to eating ice cream in her pajamas. She becomes romantically involved with Xūe Xíng, and we travel as far as the Oval Office, where a nameless vice president sings about how great guns are. By now, nothing makes sense and the tedium is off the charts.
Throughout the dream sequence are songs by Tesori (“Fun Home”), which, although not particularly memorable, deftly embrace the Rodgers and Hammerstein style. Her big ballad for Hillary near the end of the show is called “I Believe In Democracy.” This clearly baffled the Public’s audience, who audibly preferred the critiques against America.
Despite their headache-inducing material, the lead actors seem to be having fun as they skillfully hop between modern and classic settings. That makes sense, especially for Ricamora, who’s starred in both “Here Lies Love” and “The King and I.”
But you’re still left with a hodgepodge of a show. There is so much going on in Hwang and Tesori’s musical, that its power turns out to be just as described: soft.