44 - The Musical Off-Broadway Reviews

44 The Musical doesn’t seem to understand what these people believe in, even if they are caricatures, and one is left wondering what a more original satire of the era might look like. A song about bombing Osama Bin Laden and a platitude about how “they would rather watch a Black man fail than the country succeed” aside, 44: The Musical has little idea of Obama's platform, his flaws, or what his complex legacy means.

The bad news for Trump is that Obama now has a musical dedicated to his time in the White House. It’s aptly called “44: The Musical,” and opened Thursday at the Daryl Roth Theatre. The good news for 45 and 47 is that the show is “awful,” as in the original definition of the word, which is “full of awe.”

Watching 44 The Musical with jaw dropped, a dazed reviewer gets to thinking about Michelle Obama’s observation that “When they go low, we go high.” No going high about these made-up Obamas. They and their musicalized pals and detractors go limbo-bar low. If the former first lady was as uncomfortable in the White House as so frequently hinted, her fears of what she’s been put at risk for are only confirmed by this scruffy property.

One of the unwritten rules of American politics is that the vice president should never outshine the president. Eli Bauman’s 44: The Musical, tonally-strangely both an uproarious spoof and also very earnest tribute to Barack Obama, shatters that tradition, with the character of Joe Biden (Chad Doreck) spectacularly dominating the stage as the star of an uneven show, which is playing at the Daryl Roth Theatre through Dec. 7.

In a moment of gaping political wounds and sores, a high-spirited musical comedy about Barack Obama may sound like a balm. Sadly, the overlong and tonally befuddled 44—written, directed and produced by TV writer Eli Bauman, who campaigned for Obama in Las Vegas as a young man—is often as much of a slog as the partisan idiocy it mocks.