IF YOU’RE going to be in New York, you ought to see a show. There’s the usual Broadway fare, such as 42nd Street and The Lion King–assuming the talent shows up (the New York Post last week reported that anti-Bush actors were talking of calling in sick to avoid performing for Republicans). There’s also a host of politically themed shows: from Free! American Oligopoly (“An interactive theatrical performance where foreign policy takes the form of a gigantic adapted Monopoly board game!”) to the more sedate After the Storm (“One woman’s story of high hopes, shocking betrayal, and a struggle for identity which sheds light on America’s recent, undiscussed history.”) to Guantanamo and the Power of Documentary Political Theater (self-explanatory).
Unsurprisingly, there’s a raft of anti-Bush plays, movies, and installations around town. What is surprising is that there is also one (though only one) anti-Kerry production: John F. Kerry: He’s No JFK.
He’s No JFK is a satire of the Democratic nominee which supposes that Kerry’s entire career has been fueled by a Jack Kennedy complex. The play is scheduled to run not much longer than the Republican convention, at the off-Broadway Kirk Theater. It was funded and developed by a start-up theater company, DOT Productions, which is headed by Patrick Donohue, a longtime associate of New York governor George Pataki.
The six-person show begins with the “Imperial March” from Star Wars as the lights come up to reveal Hillary Clinton standing in Hell. Upset that Kerry might win the election and thereby thwart her ambitions, Hillary sends the audience on “a magical journey into the life and times of John F. Kerry” to “expose him” for the fraud he is.
The set up is promising; the execution is less so. In a scene set during his Yale undergraduate days, a friend offers Kerry some Heinz ketchup to go with a plate of fries. Kerry responds, “No, I can’t stand that stuff–it gives me the runs.”
Wanting to emulate the romantic achievements of his idol, Kerry attempts to seduce a pair of coeds. He fails and the two women wind up going home with a young George W. Bush. “Do you have a horse?” one of the girls asks Bush. “Everything’s bigger in Texas,” he leers in return.
From there the play moves on to Vietnam. Hillary says, “Perhaps you’ve heard that Kerry earned a few Purple Hearts in Vietnam, but ‘earned’ is a debatable term.” In the Vietnam sequences, Kerry is played as a bumbling Army recruit who didn’t earn his medals and hid at the first sign of trouble. It is unclear whether or not the writers understand that Kerry was an officer in the Navy.
Yet the show barrels on, hitting every button a lowest-common-denominator Republican might want. Teddy Kennedy is portrayed as an alcoholic womanizer hitting on Jane Fonda. Jim McGreevey enters to a song from the Village People; he wears a purple silk shirt and speaks with a pronounced lisp. John Edwards wears short-pants and carries a giant lollipop. Hillary makes passes at Diane Sawyer. It’s not quite as offensive as it sounds, but it isn’t as funny as it sounds, either.
For one thing, Kerry is played not as an ambitious, patrician climber, but as a cowardly, fey simpleton. Which is the standard satirical caricature not of Kerry, but of Bush. In fact, the entire production feels as though it was constructed not by watching Kerry, but by aping some of the stupider entries in the anti-Bush canon, such as Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s That’s My Bush! or Ted Rall’s Generalissimo El Busho.
The most curious thing about He’s No JFK is that it feels as though it’s produced not by right-wing cranks, but by left-wing artists who imagine that Republicans think and talk the way they do. Strangely, projecting this lefty worldview onto a satire of Kerry results in a piece that still feels anti-Bush–none of the barbs thrown Kerry’s way is true enough to be effectively disparaging.
This fact isn’t lost on the people in the show. Talking to cast members after Sunday’s performance, most of them seemed quite pro-Kerry. Kevin Kean Murphy, who plays Kerry, wouldn’t say who he was voting for in November but allowed that he’s “a lifelong Democrat.” Myles Goldin, who plays Teresa Heinz Kerry (and begins her playbill entry by saying she’s “a proud member of Equity”), told me that she hasn’t decided who to vote for, but is choosing between Kerry and Nader. On her way to the show she walked through the anti-Bush demonstrations at Union Square and was impressed by the “energy” on display.
At the end of the day, He’s No JFK is a rare animal: a pro-Kerry, anti-Kerry play. Only in New York.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
