Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy with a (Somewhat) Happy Ending

WEST WING NUTS Pettie and Barron win the Oval Office.

Photograph: Jim Baldassare

All theatrical animals are vulnerable, but none is so defenseless as the naked satire. Political parodies are entertainment’s tree frogs, first to suffer when conditions change. And so, poisoned by an environment supersaturated with Clinton awareness, Wendy Weiner’s intermittently amusing, strangely dated Hillary falls well shy of its primary goal.

Weiner’s premise has charm: Our pantsuiter-in-chief (Mia Barron) is the pawn in an eternal Olympian grudge match that rages between warrior goddess Athena (Heidi Armbruster) and lusty Aphrodite (Victoire Charles). Hillary’s staggering intellect makes her an early recruit for Team Minerva, but can she overcome the Achilles’ heel her sweetheart—and Venus devotee—Bill (Darren Pettie) hides in his shorts?

The power couple do wonderful work—Pettie charms us silly and Barron breaks our hearts. But hit-and-run material like this needs lightness, relevance and speed. Director Julie Kramer slows the show down to a walk (the plodding Greek chorus sections hamper her enormously), which gives us too much time to ask questions. Why are we rehashing the Lewinsky scandal? Do local audiences really believe that Hillary is so inhuman? A political satire opening now was a dangerous prospect from the get-go: We’ve all gorged on The Daily Show and YouTube videos and Sarah Palin shopping sprees to the point of nausea. Kramer and Weiner might want us to forget our political exhaustion, but no, they can’t.