By David Gordon
The most original new musical this season is not playing on Broadway. It’s at the venerable Public Theater. The musical is “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” written and directed by Alex Timbers, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman, rocking the house in the grand, daring tradition of “Hair” before it.
‘Bloody’ is a satirical show about the life of seventh president, his ascendance to the highest office in the land and his desire to move and/or destroy the Native American population, written in modern American English. It’s as if two of the writers of “Schoolhouse Rock” got dumped real bad, took ‘shrooms to dull the pain and started writing.
Timbers, artistic director of the troupe Les Freres Corbusier, is one of the madmen behind “Guttenberg! The Musical!” and “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant.” Friedman has scored the many hits by the troupe The Civillians, including “This Beautiful City” and “Gone Missing.” So they’re plenty qualified to bring revisionist history to the life of the guy whose face is on the $20 bill.
But it’s not all revisionist; a lot of it, even the weird stuff, is thought to be (or actually is) true. He and his wife Rachel were bigamists (she was not divorced when they married), and she died after John Quincy Adams (portrayed here, along with the other founding fathers, as outrageously flamboyant homosexuals) brought it up prior to the election of 1828. They adopted an orphaned child from the Creek tribe after the Creek War. And he would ritually bleed himself and his wife, Rachel for medicinal purposes (turned into a steamy love ballad). They were cutters. Allegedly. How emo of them! (Oh, and the Spaniards are portrayed as Zorro-like Latin lotharios.
Whether or not the music fits your definition of emo is debatable. It’s certainly more realistically emo than Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s “Spring Awakening” score. It’s memorable, it’s hummable, I can imagine a bunch of angry looking dudes screaming it unintelligibly and, most importantly, it’s hilarious. From the opening lyrics “Why wouldn’t you ever go out with me in high school? You always went out with those guys who thought they were so cool. And I was just nobody to you” to the cutting song, “Illness is a Metaphor” “It’s not blood! It’s a metaphor for love! These aren’t veins, it’s just the beating of my heart,” the score is a satiric masterpiece.
The top-notch cast is led by Benjamin Walker as Jackson, a star-making performance. Other standouts include Jeff Hiller as John Quincy Adams and Maria Elena Ramirez as Rachel. Also quite notable is Colleen Werthmann as “The Storyteller,” a paraplegic lesbian with the hots for Andrew.
The Public Theater is very daring, and credit must be given to artistic director Oskar Eustis for giving “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” a full production. How would it fare commercially? Probably not well – it’s too out there. Then again, so was “Hair.”

Benjamin Walker (Center) and the cast of Bloody Blody Andrew Jackson ( Joan Marcus)