Stll cozying-up to its new name, Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson’s Theatre Gigante (formerly Milwaukee Dance Theatre) has managed a resounding success with the premiere of its US political satire The Perfect Candidate. Running now through Saturday at the Off-Broadway Theatre, the show was written by Kralj, Anderson and veteran actor John Kishline.
Running a political comedy during election season the weekend before the actual day of the election seems like a risky proposition. The extended presidential race (which feels like it started several years ago now) has taken its toll on the electorate. The political fatigue is amplified by the constant scrutiny of three 24-hour cable news networks and countless online sources. American audiences are even oversaturated with popular topical political comedy this time around. The weekly political humor found on Saturday Night Live has been joined by irreverent bits by Bill Maher on HBO and daily doses of political comedy on basic cable from John Stewart/Stephen Colbert on the Left (Comedy Central) and (unintentionally) Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on the Right (Fox News.) In the midst of this overwhelming abundance of political humor, Theatre Gigante manages the seemingly impossible: it actually presents 90 minutes of fresh, poignant political humor bursting with original wit originating from a fresh perspective distinctly unlike anything that the mass media has come up with this election season. The Perfect Candidate isn’t some cloying evening in a theatre with wincingly bad comedy like The Capitol Steps. This is brilliantly inspired comedy.
Though this is the story of Frank, the presidential candidate from a deliberately undisclosed political party, this is not exactly a play about him. Though Tom Bruno’s performance as Hank shows a kind of everyman appeal that makes him immensely believable as a modern presidential candidate (even with a beard,) his place in the play is impressively reserved. Kralj, Anderson and Kishline have carved out a very clever ensemble piece that focuses closely on those people who form the PR and image-making machine that has sold us every president in the modern era. These are the people who convinced the American public that Nixon was a nice guythat a Navy nuclear physicist named James Earl Carter Jr. was actually a simple peanut farmer named Jimmy Carterthat a reasonably bad actor named Ronald Reagan could make a reasonably good president and so on . . . it’s these people that The Perfect Candidate focuses on with brilliantly witty dialogue laced with humor that is intricate on many levels.
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While not seeming entirely natural as a group of three-dimensional people, the ensemble so consistently delivers genuine comedy to the stage doesn’t have to. It helps that the play’s three writers make up 75% of the four actors playing the political machine. Fresh from dual roles in Next Act’s Lombardi show, Kishline shows a remarkable degree of comic poise as the subtly manipulative image maker who really would rather be the candidate himself. Marcie Hoffman and Isabelle Kralj cleverly play opposing ends of the core of the campaign’s cerebral integrity. Mark Anderson is a sweet, simple guy caught-up in determined to get the party successfully into the White House. His greatest moment here is a brilliant, unspoken comic tribute to the Hillary Clinton, “3 am phone call,” TV ads from much earlier in the campaign. The lights come up and there’s Anderson. He doesn’t have to say a word. It’s all in his poise. Brilliant.
The ensemble reacts to stresses in the campaign brought on by (in order) the candidate's marital infidelity, his sudden disappearance, his subsequently seriously ill health and finally, his apparent death. It all moves across the stage with a great deal of grace. Of particular note here is a dream dance featuring the entire cast choreographed to original Klezmer-like music written for the show by Croatian composer Borut Krzisnik. At the end of it all, we see Tom Bruno as presidential candidate Frank who has been frazzled to the bare nerves. Several silk neckties of varying garish colors cling around his throat like a flock of tastefully conservative albatrosses. The phone rings. He glances at it. This is more than just comedyit’s a graceful evening of poetic drama that just happens to be very, very funny.
Theatre Gigante’s The Perfect Candidate has two more performances: tonight and Saturday at 8pm. All performances are at the Off-Broadway Theatre on Water Street.
