Hillary and Clinton
Opening Night: April 18, 2019
Closing: July 21, 2019
Theater: John Golden Theatre
Two-time Tony Award, and three-time Emmy winner Laurie Metcalf, and two-time Tony Award and six-time Emmy winner John Lithgow return to Broadway to star in Hillary and Clinton, a new play by Tony nominee Lucas Hnath (A Doll’s House, Part 2). Directed by two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello. Behind closed doors in the state of New Hampshire during the early days of 2008, a former First Lady named Hillary is in a desperate bid to save her troubled campaign for President of the United States. Her husband, Bill, sees things one way; her campaign manager, Mark, sees things another. If any of this sounds familiar, don’t be fooled; in a universe of infinite possibilities, anything can happen. Hillary and Clinton examines the politics of marriage, gender roles, and the limitations of experience in this profound and timely look at an American dynasty in crisis.
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
April 18, 2019
Instead — and this is what makes this play something more than a receptacle for recycled observations about its famous subjects — “Hillary and Clinton” strips its protagonist down to her most ordinary self. And it invites us to look at her with the easy familiarity with which we might regard someone living next door, or in our own family. Or even our very selves, as we could be in an alternative universe, such as the one this play presents.
READ THE REVIEW
April 18, 2019
Sure, it’s entertaining; Hnath is too smart a writer, and Metcalf and Lithgow too gifted as actors, not to keep us engaged. But not only does Hillary and Clinton lack illuminating fresh perspective, it lacks drama.
READ THE REVIEWApril 18, 2019
But it is Metcalf, who seems to have become the exceptional director Joe Mantello’s muse of late (she earned a Tony for their previous collaboration in Three Tall Women and they’ve announced their next collaboration will be Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) who elevates this production with devastating take-downs of her her husband like, “You know given the chance I will eclipse you.” Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, the repercussions of that line, 11 years later, will knock the wind out of you.
READ THE REVIEW
April 18, 2019
The only thing wrong in this fictionalized visit to the 2008 primary — the one that saw Barack Obama claim the Democratic nomination for president over Hillary — is that playwright Hnath, Tony nominated for “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” has brought nothing of substance to the table. The characters stand up. The language is strong. But like Claudius’s earnest prayer to his resolutely unimpressed God in “Hamlet,” nothing said by either party reaches the heavens.
READ THE REVIEW
April 18, 2019
The cast, needless to say, couldn’t be better. There are no impersonations here, with Metcalf and Lithgow hitting something deeper and more satisfying, gaining universality while nailing the specific – watch how Metcalf sharpens into another person altogether when an outsider breeches the Clintons’ private realm. In a flash, Metcalf seems to concede Bill’s argument: Hillary is inauthenticity to the bone.
READ THE REVIEW