A profound and fateful significance is bestowed, every fourth January, upon our neighbors in New Hampshire. During this magical time, just now passed, the national media makes its way north to document a marathon of promises, pleas, and pandering in the nation’s first primary. It is a time ripe for lampooning, and playwright Robert John Ford has seized the initiative in The Primary Primary!, directed by Blair Hundertmark for the New Hampshire Theatre Project. In this exquisitely scathing musical satire, the nation’s first primary race becomes a sprint for the heart, the mind and — most importantly — the vote of one Eldon Wise (Peter Motson), a seductively “average” New Hampshire dairy farmer.
An informed and conscientious voter, Eldon has recently thrown off Republicanism and registered with the Independents (“the bisexuals of American politics,” as his laconic pal Marlon — Paul Lussier — quips). His primary vote is up for grabs, and it becomes the Holy Grail of the Granite State when young New York Times reporter Corey Larson (Brian Gregg) taps Eldon and his family to star in a series of national articles about the Average New Hampshire Man’s Decision. Adapted from Ford’s CAUCUS! The Musical, which runs simultaneously in Iowa, Primary! is a hilarious and immensely cathartic send-up of the media’s complicity in the madness, as well as of what four presidential candidates will do to get the vote.
Those candidates are uproarious and immaculately acted composites of the nation’s political figures, past and present: Senator Harrison Tate (Rob Becker) is a chronic adulterer from Florida who has trouble with big words. Reverend Stanley Jensen (Thomas Olson), an Oklahoma evangelical, wants to eliminate that inconvenient wall between Church and State. Lone female candidate Senator Nora Halliday (Kristan Raymond Robinson), of Ohio, promises “A New Day,” women’s rights, and an end to the war. And Representative Benjamin Goldman (Kennedy Pugh), a black homosexual from California, would be the Diversity President.
None of them would be anywhere near New Hampshire, however, if it weren’t for their savvy campaign managers (Meghann Beauchamp, Genevieve Aichele, Liz Crane, and Tobin Moss, all excellent). They know the media game inside and out, and each sets his or her boss’s sights on winning over one of the four picture-perfect, voting-age Wises: Paterfamilias Eldon; his sweet, nervous wife Kate (Kathy Somssich); theater major and wrestler Justin (Robin Fowler); and college freshman Kristin (Jessica Noone). I don’t want to be a punch-line spoiler, so suffice it to say that the foibles, revelations, and family breakdowns that ensue make for some of the sharpest and most outrageously entertaining political theater to come out of the modern campaign circus.
The only moment when the play stalls a bit is at its point of synthesis, when an independent candidate, Governor John Littlebear of Alaska (Alan Huisman) offers the Wises an alternative — conversation, compromise — to all the spectacle-mongering. While the message is acute and important, Ford’s delivery of it is just a little too earnest for a little too long.
As for the family at the center of the spectacle, the Wise family’s dynamics are a riot as the four of them evolve from their unthinking plastic harmony to a more difficult understanding of each other’s differences. Their conflicts make for hysterical dinner-table scenes, and also dramatizes the play’s implicit analogy: This must-see show likens the whole rancorous citizenry to a family, one that disagrees but that can nevertheless hold a conversation, and that can learn, for its own good, the art of compromise.
THE PRIMARY PRIMARY! by Robert John Ford | Directed by Blair Hundertmark | Produced by the New Hampshire Theatre Project, in Portsmouth NH | through January 20 | 603.431.6644
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Megan Grumbling: mgrumbling@hotmail.com.
