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| Hugh Jackman and Julia Roberts among stars at Clinton Broadway fundraiser | |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| If swing state equivocators come across for Hillary Clinton, they will most likely not have been prodded the sparkly, slapdash, occasionally aggravating, often irresistible, and seriously solipsistic Stronger Together, a fundraiser for Clinton created by the Broadway community, live-streamed on several platforms. A haphazard mix of song, story and Hugh Jackman, the show again showed the support of workers in the arts for the Democratic party, a point recently made by the astonishing talent differential at the conventions. (Remember? Alicia Keys, Paul Simon, Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Lenny Kravitz, Carole King, Katy Perry v Scott Baio.) | If swing state equivocators come across for Hillary Clinton, they will most likely not have been prodded the sparkly, slapdash, occasionally aggravating, often irresistible, and seriously solipsistic Stronger Together, a fundraiser for Clinton created by the Broadway community, live-streamed on several platforms. A haphazard mix of song, story and Hugh Jackman, the show again showed the support of workers in the arts for the Democratic party, a point recently made by the astonishing talent differential at the conventions. (Remember? Alicia Keys, Paul Simon, Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Lenny Kravitz, Carole King, Katy Perry v Scott Baio.) |
| On Monday night, plenty of luminaries packed the St James Theatre, onstage and behind it. Jordan Roth, Richie Jackson, Stephen Schwartz and Harvey Weinstein produced the program. Billy Crystal hosted it. Michael Mayer directed with Diane Paulus as special consultant, perhaps because Paulus is a director if passion and verve, perhaps because it would have been a gaffe to exclude women from the creative team. The cavalcade of performers don’t seem to have spent much time rehearsing, so the evening’s tone was uneven as was its execution. | On Monday night, plenty of luminaries packed the St James Theatre, onstage and behind it. Jordan Roth, Richie Jackson, Stephen Schwartz and Harvey Weinstein produced the program. Billy Crystal hosted it. Michael Mayer directed with Diane Paulus as special consultant, perhaps because Paulus is a director if passion and verve, perhaps because it would have been a gaffe to exclude women from the creative team. The cavalcade of performers don’t seem to have spent much time rehearsing, so the evening’s tone was uneven as was its execution. |
| The program opened with Billy Crystal performing a Comedy Tonight parody and delivering a Borscht-Beltish monologue in which he compared Donald Trump to a 7-11: “He’s open 24 hours selling us crap we don’t want.” He then introduced a disembodied Barbra Streisand as the “voice of God”, which is pretty much how the Broadway community regards her. | The program opened with Billy Crystal performing a Comedy Tonight parody and delivering a Borscht-Beltish monologue in which he compared Donald Trump to a 7-11: “He’s open 24 hours selling us crap we don’t want.” He then introduced a disembodied Barbra Streisand as the “voice of God”, which is pretty much how the Broadway community regards her. |
| Hugh Jackman sauntered onstage to deliver Oh What a Beautiful Morning, a sly reappropriation of the Morning in American slogan. He altered the lyrics to say, “Everything’s going her way,” and encouraged the audience in a singalong. But the next few songs seemed less germane, the fiddle-while-Weimar burns anthems Wilkommen and Cabaret (well at least Joel Grey and Sienna Miller they didn’t choose Tomorrow Belongs to Me) and Been a Long Day, performed by Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, with an assist from Victoria Clark. | Hugh Jackman sauntered onstage to deliver Oh What a Beautiful Morning, a sly reappropriation of the Morning in American slogan. He altered the lyrics to say, “Everything’s going her way,” and encouraged the audience in a singalong. But the next few songs seemed less germane, the fiddle-while-Weimar burns anthems Wilkommen and Cabaret (well at least Joel Grey and Sienna Miller they didn’t choose Tomorrow Belongs to Me) and Been a Long Day, performed by Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, with an assist from Victoria Clark. |
| More apropos were Anne Hathaway and Kelli O’Hara’s Get Happy/ Happy Days Are Here Again duet, Stephen Schwartz and O’Hara’s For Good, and Josh Groban’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Numbers like Emily Blunt’s No One Is Alone, Neil Patrick Harris’s The Origin of Love and Ayodele Casel’s tap routine acknowledged Clinton-Kaine campaign as the humane, all-embracing alternative to Trump-Pence. | More apropos were Anne Hathaway and Kelli O’Hara’s Get Happy/ Happy Days Are Here Again duet, Stephen Schwartz and O’Hara’s For Good, and Josh Groban’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Numbers like Emily Blunt’s No One Is Alone, Neil Patrick Harris’s The Origin of Love and Ayodele Casel’s tap routine acknowledged Clinton-Kaine campaign as the humane, all-embracing alternative to Trump-Pence. |
| A high road smackdown was delivered to Trump via Bernadette Peters’s Children Will Listen and a lower one by Anna Wintour, who compared the “hideous ties” sold by Trump to the American-made shirts that fashion designers had created for the Clinton campaign. (Wintour actually wore a T-shirt herself, more or less, a sequin-encrusted version of a Marc Jacobs design.) Sarah Jones gave perhaps the cleverest denunciation of the evening, hailing Clinton as the candidate who “understands Great White Way is not a policy mandate”. | A high road smackdown was delivered to Trump via Bernadette Peters’s Children Will Listen and a lower one by Anna Wintour, who compared the “hideous ties” sold by Trump to the American-made shirts that fashion designers had created for the Clinton campaign. (Wintour actually wore a T-shirt herself, more or less, a sequin-encrusted version of a Marc Jacobs design.) Sarah Jones gave perhaps the cleverest denunciation of the evening, hailing Clinton as the candidate who “understands Great White Way is not a policy mandate”. |
| Clinton herself did not appear live, but she delivered a video message, saluting the arts for telling us “what we are, where we are going and where we will be”. Chelsea Clinton appeared, making a poised speech, while Bill Clinton delivered a far more rambling one that touched on Bob Dylan, independent bookstores, mental health advocacy, and Shimon Peres, rather than the Lerner and Loewe medley everyone had hoped for. | Clinton herself did not appear live, but she delivered a video message, saluting the arts for telling us “what we are, where we are going and where we will be”. Chelsea Clinton appeared, making a poised speech, while Bill Clinton delivered a far more rambling one that touched on Bob Dylan, independent bookstores, mental health advocacy, and Shimon Peres, rather than the Lerner and Loewe medley everyone had hoped for. |
| More focused spoken word was provided by Helen Mirren, who recited a speech of Eleanor Roosevelt’s and Angela Bassett, who offered an ardent Sojourner Truth. Jon Hamm and Jake Gyllenhaal provided an enthusiastic, though underprepared seen from It Can’t Happen Here while Julia Roberts went inadvisably off script in the casually profane intro that prefaced her Molly Ivins recitation. Roberts, along with Sarah Paulson, Lena Dunham, Uzo Aduba, Ansel Elgort and Harris returned in an endless sequence in which they traded quotations as in some superlatively dull parlor game. | More focused spoken word was provided by Helen Mirren, who recited a speech of Eleanor Roosevelt’s and Angela Bassett, who offered an ardent Sojourner Truth. Jon Hamm and Jake Gyllenhaal provided an enthusiastic, though underprepared seen from It Can’t Happen Here while Julia Roberts went inadvisably off script in the casually profane intro that prefaced her Molly Ivins recitation. Roberts, along with Sarah Paulson, Lena Dunham, Uzo Aduba, Ansel Elgort and Harris returned in an endless sequence in which they traded quotations as in some superlatively dull parlor game. |
| But the evening finished strongly with a riff on Ten Duel Commandments performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Renee Elise Goldsberry (“I have only one overwhelming feeling/ Anyone here want to shatter a glass ceiling?”) and a rendition of Battle Hymn of the Republic led by the Cynthia Erivo, which was fittingly and climactically glorious. | But the evening finished strongly with a riff on Ten Duel Commandments performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Renee Elise Goldsberry (“I have only one overwhelming feeling/ Anyone here want to shatter a glass ceiling?”) and a rendition of Battle Hymn of the Republic led by the Cynthia Erivo, which was fittingly and climactically glorious. |
| One might question the purposed of the exercise. Show tunes and spoken word presented by women, minorities, members of the LBGTQ community, and Elgort almost certainly won’t tip undecided voters toward Clinton. But something about that untidy, embraceable mix of performers also works to define the Democratic party as one of inclusivity and liberality, a big, tuneful and frequently spangled tent. | One might question the purposed of the exercise. Show tunes and spoken word presented by women, minorities, members of the LBGTQ community, and Elgort almost certainly won’t tip undecided voters toward Clinton. But something about that untidy, embraceable mix of performers also works to define the Democratic party as one of inclusivity and liberality, a big, tuneful and frequently spangled tent. |