White House Scandals, With Ridicule for All ‘Clinton: The Musical’ Makes Everybody Look Bad

The folks behind Clinton: The Musical are said to have invited the former first couple to attend a performance of what is coyly called a spoof of their eight years in the White House. Note to the box office: They’re not likely to show up at the will call window. Nor, for that matter, are Newt Gingrich or Dick Morris, Monica Lewinsky or Kenneth Starr. Especially Kenneth Starr. Written by Paul and Michael Hodge, brothers from Australia, Clinton was first presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe two years ago and then had a run in London. Now part of the New York Musical Theater Festival, the show reduces the Clinton years to a stew of sex farce and hypocrisy, in keeping with the timeworn theme that politics is just show business for ugly people. Clinton: The Musical is an equal-opportunity defamer: The president is both policy-driven technocrat and sax-playing hound dog, so conflicted that he’s portrayed by two actors; the first lady is a pants-suited force of her own, a senator in waiting. (Al Gore is a cardboard cutout, literally.) Even before they fight to save their legacy after the president’s affair with an amorous Monica, they must battle a power-mad Newt, a kinky Ken and a complicit, salacious press.