He's so that guy!

March 14, 2013

Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson is in town for a a few weeks, and I can tell you in person he doesn't look much like the president on your $20 bill. He looks more like this guy---younger, tougher, more crazed and charismatic. Actually, he's kind of like this guy updated, with his skinny jeans, metal and better dance moves. The student theatre has thrown everything they've got into Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and that's a whole lot. Besides a writhing, whiny, soulful rockin' presidential studmuffin, there are pretty girls who cheerlead and make out on executive order. There's a girlfriend wife who is at least as beautiful as this tarted up sappy portrait of Rachel Donelson, the nice woman who committed bigamy to marry Andrew. Only in this show, she likes to cut herself with her new hubby.

Rachel Dolson

Besides Andrew and his girls, there are also several presidents and senators (most of them east coast eltitist News York Times reading twits), many anonymous indians (some killing, many more being killed), and enough paraphernalia and dead animals to fill a Smithsonian basement. The whole wild west show is presided over by a gee whiz idolatrous narrator, at least until she is put aside in a particularly decisive moment. At the Bon Vivant theater the cup of our manifest destiny truly overfloweth!

Don't go if the celebratory indulgence of the f word offends you. If you are a native American you might not like it (the play makes much of exposing Jackson's racial genocide, yet the indians remain as much objects of satirical reduction as everyone else in the show). But if you like your theatre rowdy, exuberent, rocking and very very American, with quite a bit of wiki-history thrown in, you're likely to have a very good 100 minutes in a 19th century country that looks an awful lot like the one we live in right now.

It's a great show for those of us who put bumper stickers on our trucks. It's a great show for those of us who care about the second amendment. It is full of angst, gusto and anger. It smells of tea and good Kentucky bourbon. Its juts the thing for the vigorous, the determined, and the confused who are going to reclaim our great nation:

...it's the early 19th century
And we're gonna take this country back
From people like us who don't just think about things
People who make things happen.
Sometimes with guns
Sometimes with speeches too.
And also other things.

And bloody bloody Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States,is the man for this job. He's so that guy!

Murray Ross

Murray Ross (1942–2017) was born in California to an English mother and an American father. He went east to study at Williams College where his love of Shakespeare blossomed. After graduate work in Rochester, New York; Berkeley, California; and London, England, he settled in Colorado Springs in 1975 to teach in the English Department at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. He and his wife founded Theatreworks with a small group of fellow theatre lovers. He served as the artistic director of the organization for more the 40 years, and taught thousands of students in the University's theatre program, which he also founded. He directed, wrote, and adapted hundreds of plays at Theatreworks and across the country. In his own words, which appeared as the last line of his directing bio for years, he was married to the painter Elizabeth Ross, was the father of four splendid sons, and was regularly walked by his dog, Toby.

Murray Ross

Murray Ross (1942–2017) was born in California to an English mother and an American father. He went east to study at Williams College where his love of Shakespeare blossomed. After graduate work in Rochester, New York; Berkeley, California; and London, England, he settled in Colorado Springs in 1975 to teach in the English Department at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. He and his wife founded THEATREWORKS with a small group of fellow theatre lovers. He served as the artistic director of the organization for more the 40 years, and taught thousands of students in the University's theatre program, which he also founded. He directed, wrote, and adapted hundreds of plays at THEATREWORKS and across the country. In his own words, which appeared as the last line of his directing bio for years, he was married to the painter Elizabeth Ross, was the father of four splendid sons, and was regularly walked by his dog, Toby.