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 that can happen, will.
In Hillary and Clinton, Lucas Hnath examines the politics of marriage, gender roles, and the limitations of experience and inevitability in this profoundly timely look at an American dynasty in crisis.
I've liked this play since I first saw its premiere in Chicago - and, in Metcalf and Lithgow, it now has two in-sync old pros, demonstrably aware of the capriciousness of fame and power. Of course, this is not a charitable portrait of two dedicated public servants. Both appear without their pants at times - Hnath reduces them to hotel room obsessives, navigating their greatest challenge. Each other.
Like Hnath's A Doll's House, Part 2, this play is also a protrait of a complicated marriage, loving but not fully satisfying, and of a woman's attempts to define herself beyond it; her agitation is adeptly contrasted with Bill's wounded slickness and the smooth confidence of her primary opponent, Barack Obama (Peter Francis James). Directed firmly and dryly by Joe Mantello, Hillary and Clinton is cogent, snappy and perceptive about political and emotional realities. Much of the ground it covers might seem old to those who follow the news, but the play has now, as it could not have had in 2016, a looming sense of tragedy. Its final line, a shiv to the gut, sends you out hurting into the universe, outside the theater, where we somehow find ourselves now.
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