A new Broadway play, Hillary and Clinton, will feature Laurie Metcalf as Hillary Clinton along with John Lithgow as the former president.
The play, written by Tony nominee Lucas Hnath, will focus on the 2008 election. The plot follows the Former First Lady trying to save her presidential campaign. A press release described the play, noting that it won’t just be a straight-forward, historical plot:
“Behind closed doors in the state of New Hampshire during the early days of 2008, a former First Lady named Hillary (Metcalf) is in a desperate bid to save her troubled campaign for President of the United States. Her husband, Bill (Lithgow), sees things one way; her campaign manager, Mark, sees things another. If any of this sounds familiar, don’t be fooled; in a universe of infinite possibilities, anything that can happen, will.”
The announcement states that the play “examines the politics of marriage, gender roles, and the limitations of experience and inevitability in this profoundly timely look at an American dynasty in crisis.”
Metcalf is a two-time Tony Award winner and a three-time Emmy Award Winner. Previously, she has starred on Broadway in Three Tall Women and returned to TV this year for the Roseanne reboot The Connors. Lithgow, also a two-time Tony Award winner and a six-time Emmy Award winner, starred on his own one-man Broadway show recently, dubbed John Lithgow: Stories By Heart.
Scott Rudin, who produced Three Tall Women and Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2, will also produce Hillary and Clinton. Joe Mantello, known for Three Tall Women and The Boys in the Band, will stage the play.
“Lucas’ play is that rare kind of blow-the-door-off-its-hinges new work that I will always respond to and want to present,” Rudin told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s a political play — but not in the way I think anybody will expect. It treats the Clintons like Shakespeare treated real people in his history plays — it is both fundamentally truthful and also wildly imaginative. It’s not in any way a docudrama or a work of nonfiction but rather an exploration of power and how it works, not only in the canvas of a political campaign but inside an enduring marriage.”
Previews for the show will begin on March 16, 2019, with an opening night set for Thursday, April 18. A Broadway venue has not been announced at this time.
