Hillary Clinton Is Coming To Broadway…Played By Laurie Metcalf

Hillary Clinton, Laurie Metcalf Image by Getty/Forward Montage

By Jenny Singer October 4, 2018

Political theater takes on a literal meaning as Lucas Hnath’s play “Hillary and Clinton” sets a date for a Broadway premiere.

Hnath is a young but formidable Broadway player — his “A Doll’s House Part II” received eight Tony nominations in 2017. Like that play, “Hillary and Clinton” will be produced by Jewish powerhouse Scott Rudin, and will star the ever-beloved Laurie Metcalf, who won the Tony for her role in “Doll’s House.”

The play, which will be directed by Joe Mantello (you know him from about half the Broadway plays you’ve ever seen), takes audiences to Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign war rooms in (wait for it) 2008, as the longtime politician attempted to wrestle the democratic nomination for president out of the hands of one Barack Obama. Metcalf will play opposite John Lithgow in the Broadway production of Hnath’s play which debuted in April 2016 in Chicago.

Will this play — which casts celebrated faces as living historical figures in imagined versions of scenes that happened so recently — be much different then, say, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” the bloated Broadway backstory about the boy who lived? Don’t underestimate Rudin’s crack team — he, Metcalf, and Mantello rarely err.

This strange blue wave will crash on the shores of the great white way April 18, 2019.

Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO