46 Plays For America’s First Ladies

Or: Brick by Brick

“I’m Jane Pierce,” grins Phoebe Gonzalez, kicking off a micro bioplay, in the style of a stand-up routine, “And I’m Depressing!”

The fourteenth installment of Forward Theater’s 46 Plays For America’s First Ladies (co-created by Chloe Johnston, Sharon Green, Genevra Gallo-Bayiastes, Bilal Bardai and Andy Bayiastes) judges its matter just right (Jane Pierce really IS depressing,) but the bitter comedy-act routine unwillingly overseen by her husband Franklin (Jamal James) Gonzalez smoothly slides from magnetic comedian to heartbroken defendant by the perfect degree.

Five actors, Gonzalez, James, Nadja Simmonds, Matt Daniels and Elyse Edelman, each take on the mantle of one of the First Ladies of these United States (by virtue of a Stars and Stripes Scarf), then skip through 46 less than five minute plays. To be quite frank, a lot of them are really depressing. A good many of the early plays focus on just how little we know about these women, relegated as they often were to shadows and satellites of their husbands and fathers. “If you want to do something hard,” Eliza Johnson (Gonzalez again) remarks, try to reconstruct the inner character of a 19th century woman, overlooked by history who effetely erased herself from the record. “If you want to do something harder,” She continues, “Try finding out anything about the woman she owned.”

The five playwrights have no desire to write hagiographies of their subjects, preferring to hold them up in the unflattering light of America’s systemic racism, ingrained sexism, and long history of genocide. Some women support patriarchy, is the message to take away here. We should not remember the ladies without first putting them to the litmus test of placing them in a vat of hard principal, in whose acidic waters many a porcelain facade fizzles and cracks. The recovering the silenced voices picks up off the bat with Third First Lady, a victim of child molestation, swindled by the man who owned her, Sally Hemmings (James). “I’m so sorry,” her niece/step-daughter/owner Martha Jefferson (Edelman) weeps, whitely. “That maybe true.” Jamal replies, “But I doubt it mattered much to poor Sally Hemmings back then. It certainly doesn’t now.”

But while all the plays carry a torque of truth they don’t shake its burning embers on everyone. The plays run from cabaret songs, to tiny musings to tableauxs. Some are delightful such as Grace Coolidge (Gonzalez) doing a Charleston with Rebecca (Edelman) her pet Raccoon (“With Tiny Paws!”), or an SNL like sketch of Florence Harding (James) inventing the photo-op and revealing herself to be a space wizard. Or, most deliciously, a campy Break Dance filled After-School-Special, “Hey fellow classmate. Would you like to meet behind the equipment shed and reconsider Nancy Regan’s legacy?”)

Building on the cleverly sedimentary set of Mike Lawer and skipping to the evolving First Lady theme of Joe Cerqua, the audience, both those happy, protected few in the Forward and the far flung on the screens get to sample a wide ranging smorgasbord of history bon mots. Some are sweet (Nellie Taft in seven Haiku, Frances Cleveland, (part 1), staring in an a cappella music video of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun). Some are passionate personal tales: a mirrored, book end reflection by Simmonds about the quintessential first lady, one paying homage to beauty and artifice, the other committed to truth and service, Dolly Madison and Michelle Obama) or the quite hollowness of Mary Todd Lincoln (Daniels), or Edelman’s bursting enthusiasm for the lost story of Harriet Lane, the possibly sapphic adoptive daughter of the probably gay James Buchanan. And some fall short of the desired mark (Mamie Eisenhower as a monster of Camazotz, Hillary Clinton as a campfire ghost story meets high school spoken word poem, and Andrew Jackson as a giant vengeful sock puppet**).

But sometimes they are straight up beautiful. There’s Pierce’s stand up routine, then James (in a genteel and magnetically menacing performance) becomes Pat Nixon taking a loyalty test from an audience member (“you can only answer Yes, or God Bless America.”) or the sprightly, loving, then horrifying pas a deux between Bess and Harry Truman (Simmonds and Daniels).

The point of the forty six plays is that our country is a mess, and the dirty laundry only keeps stacking higher with each administration (some dumping out more waste than others). For a country that was born and still prides itself on its ideals we can no longer look for the City on the Hill without recognizing that it is situated on stolen land, built by souls in bondage, and swept and polished by silenced citizens fearful of their lives.

But the wheel of fortune does turn towards righteousness, even when we force it backwards (I’ve never known a political purgative as welcome as Rosalind Carter (Edelman) lambasting in her dulcet Georgian tones and christian righteousness, the dingbat voters of the nation who handed us to Regan in ’81 and then shoved us again into the maw of a worser regime 35 years later.) As we unpack the old edifices brick by brick, we can use them to build something new and better, with liberty and justice for all.

**For me, no one can outdo Stalin as a regular sized vengeful sock puppet, as seen in the Rough Mechanicals's Cosmic Events are Upon Us. The conceit has been ruined by perfection.