Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and Enjoy

This month's CUNY GC Advocate includes my thoughts on Les  Frères Corbusier's Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and the Play Company's production of Toshiki Okada's Enjoy.

Excerpts:

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, currently enjoying a twice-extended run at the Public Theater, re-imagines our sev­enth president as a post-punk, emo pop-rock star whose emotional scars drive him both to greatness and to geno­cide. There’s a touch of genius in framing Jackson as an emotional adolescent who over compensates for both his own insecurities and his distrust of authority by adopting a swaggering, hyper sexual confidence. As played by the ridiculously sexy Benjamin Walker, this Jackson wears skin-tight jeans and form-clinging long-sleeved t-shirts, brandishing his pain (and a holstered revolver) as a rallying cry against “Washington elites” as he rides his war-hero status and his populist rhetoric all the way to the White House. He wears black eye liner, he massacres the Creek and Seminole tribes, he cuts his arm in the manner of a bipolar teen, he balances the budget, and he sings power ballads.

Photo by Joan Marcus 

[...]Unfortunately, though, BBAJ is also a little smug, a little glib, and a little pat. While it pretends to challenge viewers to reexamine their preconceptions, it is actually designed to elicit self-congratulatory laughs and knowing nods from an audience that already shares its point of view. Its humor is almost entirely derisive and dismissive, particularly (but not only) when directed against Jackson and his admirers. Jackson is presented as with out redeeming qualities, not only anti-intellectual but down right stupid. His persuasiveness and charisma are reduced to, and dis­missed as, a result of the fit of his jeans and the cut of his pecs, a genuinely amusing conceit that cuts off any possibility of real engage ment with the strength and appeal of his persona and his rhetoric. The show’s vision of Jack son also leads to a certain amount of musical confusion, conflating emo with cock rock, and emo fans with frat boys. Neither of these genres is executed particularly well; some of the songs are catchy, but the ridiculousness, the intentional badness, is painted on in thick layers.

[...]

[Toshiki Okada's] Enjoy, which is just finishing its English-language premiere in a production by thePhoto by Carol RoseggCompany, follows a handful of temp workers at a manga café as they drift through their lives, careers, and relationships. They over-think the triv­ial in order to distract themselves from more pressing matters, including the identity crisis brought on by entering one’s thirties while working part time in a manga café.

Ogawa’s remarkable translation seems to capture Okada’s tone perfectly (think Waiting for Godot meets Clerks or Slackers, only in Tokyo.) This is a very Japanese play, but American generations X and Y will find much to relate to if they allow themselves to relax into the show’s static pacing. Director Dan Rothenberg (of Pig Iron) directs a solid, occasionally extraordinary cast with a deft hand. Okada’s work is poised to take on a higher profile in New York’s experimental scene (his 5 Days in March, which Okada’s company presented at the Japan Society last year, is about to open in English at LaMama); consider this your chance to know about him before all your friends do.

Full review(s) here.