As
opposed to American Idiot,
which seems a genuine counter-culture manifesto, Bloody Bloody Andrew
Jackson strikes me as
counterfeit enough to take a real stand on and just say no, sorry. A youth-rock
history lesson about the making of the man and at length the American President
of the title, by way of contemporary allegory, it roughly takes the form of a
sophomoric revue, telling the tale in linked vignettes and sketches, peppered
through with new millennium colloquial profanity and idiomÑrather as if
Joss Whedon had decided to put provocative American history through a Buffy-type filterÑbut without Whedon's knack for doing
so with wit, characterization and coherent structure.
In
fact, there's a flopsweat desperation to the performance style, which equates
comedy with loud-fast-antic business and delivery; and indeed at the performance
I attended, audience reaction did not reflect the exuberant raves that have
attended the piece, but instead bore out what one might expect: that there are
pockets of adherents for whom this kind of kneejerk rebel thing will always
seem fresh and fascinatingÑeither because they respond simply to the
innate pretension of the concept and/or because they're too young to remember
how many other times similar approaches have been presented in decades
pastÑand that the more general audience reaction is a mix of
genial-to-bored tolerance and bewilderment at all the great press.
I promise you, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is neither fresh nor original nor deep nor even particularly hip. In
fact, alongside the far savvier, more entertaining revivals of the "establishment" Promises,
Promises (circa 1968) and the "renegade" Hair (1967), it may be
the most retro evening in town.
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