Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
9 / 10
Songwriter Friedman has always had an uncanny knack for the catchy hook and the clever lyric that rises to philosophical wistfulness. And here, he works in the surly emo-rock mode, finding exhilaration in the pent-up rage and nihilism that both demands center stage and shrinks from scrutiny. Not since Stephen Sondheim played bitter variations on “Hail to the Chief” for Assassins (1991) has a Broadway musical so starkly and brutally examined the underside of the American Dream. Particularly in the subdued penultimate number “Second Nature,” Friedman moves past the Sontag and Foucault namechecking to offer a hushed, plangent elegy for this land of strip malls over killing fields.
