Last week I started my journey into the political musicals of Michael John LaChiusa. His 1993 musical First Lady Suite was a good idea on paper, but it left me largely cold, finding a beginner with limited resources making an amusing musical. There was potential in the lyrical component, but the jangling from a piano took away some of its nuances, making it all sound like 90 minutes of washed out exuberance. It’s good and the stories by themselves were fine, but it made me hesitant to visit his spiritual sequel, First Daughters Suite, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2015. While I loved the idea of Amy Carter singing to Susan Ford, I worried that LaChiusa was going to hit the same road bumps along the way.
I’m proud to say that the 12 years between projects found an artist growing and learning how to develop his craft into something far more ambitious and endearing. This is a story so full of derangement as it melds in a heart alongside some trashy soap opera ideas. It fits with the belief that Music-Lyrics-Book writing extraordinaire LaChiusa writes “esoteric” musicals. While First Ladies Suite was definitely avant-garde in theory, it created a familiar picture within these miniature stories.
What First Daughters Suite does is push the boundaries further. It could just be that First Daughters have a richer territory. Nobody is really capable of fully understanding them. They are in some ways freaks of nature, misunderstood because of who their parents are. It’s a theme that exists throughout the story and is given weight by playing the mother-daughter relationships in ways that are far more interesting than the 1993 prequel. Here is a story where The First Ladies are more prominent, reflecting personal struggles as their daughters rebel. While the mothers all share that caring prism, no two daughters are the same, where the range of topics include rain on a wedding day, a fantasy version of The Iran Hostage Crisis, and a dead daughter consoling her mother on her presidential son.
If anything, the collection of stories is much more interesting than before. They feel more realized, in part because they follow a more conventional structure. The First Ladies Suite set out to reflect the exciting lives of these women that were sidelined by history. The issue is that the order and topics felt random, making the stakes feel largely absent. There was little connective tissue besides their shared title. First Daughters Suite works because it’s more about a universal conflict that could be had in your own home. Your child will resent you at some point in your life. They will feel misunderstood. Now imagine them doing that in The White House. The potential is insatiable.
Like William Finn between In Trousers and March of the Falsettos, the effort to understand craft is appreciable. There’s an actual orchestra on tap, able to play a more dimensional score that elevates the music into something dramatic, so full of meaning and life. It also helps that there’s a stronger differentiation between character, where everyone has their own cadence and motif. More than anything, I am glad to see LaChiusa using motifs more effectively, bringing back ideas throughout that play to the misunderstood nature of First Daughters especially. They have to be prim and proper but, if you know a kid, they want to be anything but.
Another thing that feels like an incredible relief is that this show is allowed to be loose. There’s allowed to be a recurring motif of mothers growing offended by their daughters’ use of profanity. For some, it’s shocking because they’re young kids. For others, it’s what those words symbolize as personal forms of attack. Then again, there’s a world of difference between Amy Carter and Patti Davis. One just thinks their mother is boring while the other is on the verge of writing a slanderous book about her life.
If anything, LaChiusa seems to have more interest in getting into what makes all of these characters unique. Even if these characters fade, their thematic resonance carries through, eventually leading to Barbara Bush talking to her dead daughter Robin about how she failed her son, George W. Bush. It’s somehow poignant that it ends with a mother listening, realizing their mistakes when they have grown up. There is actual weight behind the neglect, that some will act out or not be able to behave in humane ways. While this isn’t a total criticism on Bush as a president, it definitely speaks to some flaws of character that can be found in his actions.
To put it simply, everything that didn’t work for First Ladies Suite works perfectly here. Gone are the embarrassing lyrical passages and instead are these cohesive songs, often going up to eight or nine minutes, that delve into stories that are engrossing, using esoteric structure in such a way that conveys humor and growth. What some lack in genuine pop structure, it manages to work as narratives within narratives, finding a deranged heart that is astounding.
The best way to discuss things is to just go through each of the four stories one by one. Up first is “Happy Pat,” which is a bit misleading. It’s a simple story and one that feels concerning for those who were bored with his 1993 musical. This is the most familiar in broad strokes, detailing the wedding of Tricia Nixon, which is to take place at The White House. As a conversation with Patricia (played by Falsetto’s Barbara Walsh) and daughter Julie Nixon will reveal, it’s about to rain and that could be a bad omen. That’s it. That’s the subject of this whole story.
I suppose LaChiusa’s smartest gift as a composer is that he creates something minimal, able to make the world feel small and familiar. It’s a conflict that holds so much significance yet the event sounds so mundane compared to what’s about to happen. Then again, a marriage is the first step into forming a family, having your own children to raise. Even if we don’t ever get to see Tricia’s kids, it does feel like this is a journey through the life span of a mother and daughter, starting with vows and ending with them adults, forming their own decisions.
That is why “Happy Pat” is a secretly brilliant piece. Then again, it’s just more tolerable than the opening of First Ladies’ Suite, which found work harassment aboard Air Force One being its central theme. Suddenly weddings sound more enjoyable, especially when it reflects so much conflict in the family, itself reflective of a mother-daughter struggle, eager to please and make their big day special.
Though, if I’m being honest, “Amy Carter’s Fabulous Dream Adventure” is the real reason that I wanted to do this column. For reasons I won’t get into, I consider Jimmy Carter to be a personal hero. I respect his whole family, though I’ve always seen Amy as the bookworm child who is a bit too dull. Basically, she is the least controversial First Daughter of the 20th Century. Even if she had a controversy, I can’t see it being more than a petty theft that she would immediately apologize for.
Which makes so much of this a delightful creation. I love the idea of Amy being obsessed with Susan Ford, claiming that because they both lived in The White House, they are somehow capable of being friends. It’s to Carly Tamer’s credit that she makes Amy sound so bright-eyed, overenthusiastic. Susan, meanwhile, is embarrassed by Betty Ford’s willingness to share personal stories with Rosalyn Carter (played by Heidi Hansen herself Rachel Bay Jones). Susan’s just as sheepish, almost grunting her lines for lack of slamming a door that would shut this chapter of her life.
This is easily the most esoteric sequence in the whole story, contradicting everything that I personally know about Amy Carter. This is a dream sequence where she goes to Iran with her mother to save the day. The Fords end up dead at one point, though Amy can’t die or the dream ends. It’s such a surreal world where gunfire is brought into the story and suddenly Amy seems like this deranged psychopath. She has bravery and a sadistic imagination that surprises. What makes it all endearing is that she learns why she needs to be nice to others.
The only thing that’s really bad about this sequence is that her handling of The Iran Hostage Crisis features her fighting evil Iranians. In theory, that’s not so bad. However, these bad guys are really broad caricatures, who speak in buzz words like “Hezbollah!” It’s all nonsense and gets some pass because it’s a child’s imagination, but it still feels like xenophobia that isn’t helped by the scenario it’s placed in. Of course, the joke is that Amy’s too sweet to ever act out. I agree it makes it adorable. It’s just in a very weird (and wonderful) piece of theater, it’s one detail that is a bit jarring given modern sensitivities.
Of course, it’s interesting to see this as the most innocent segment as well. After all, it is a fantasy where Amy thinks of what could be. The rest are looking at what is or was. In the third story “Patti By the Pool” (reduced to two songs on the soundtrack), Patti Davis talks to her mother Nancy Reagan while by a pool, watching her give into luxury. Even as they try to talk to each other, there is some distance. They have different ideals that cause them to constantly argue. Patti tries to have her listen, using profanity and saying that she’s dressed like a “tranny” to get a rise.
What’s impressive is how much of a journey “Patti By the Pool” is as a track. It feels like the entire scene played out, finding characters entering and exiting in real-time. Nancy is oblivious, and it eventually grows heartbreaking. It’s the type of neglect that is sad, that finds any crass nature breaking through. Before with Amy and Susan, them calling their mother boring is a childish act that has little weight. For Patti, now in her 30s, it’s something that threatens to rip apart the family. It’s a tour de force that surpasses any single part of First Ladies Suite and does so by capturing LaChiusa’s perspective precisely.
“In the Deep Bosom of the Ocean Buried” ends the show with Barbara and Robin coming to terms with how she raised George. It’s an interesting twist to things in large part because of who George is. He is only the second son to a president that became president. In that way, you’d expect the male counterpart to be raised with some effort and dignity. But, as LaChiusa claims so often, George wasn’t. He did everything that the girls did, but it was all an attempt to feel love. The fact that this is done through a dead daughter is a bit surreal but shows an internal struggle in a masterful way.
I think the biggest difference between the two is that I understand why First Daughters Suite was created. There is something that LaChiusa wanted to say that wasn’t obvious. While Eleanor Roosevelt flying with Amelia Earhart is an interesting idea, it’s not given its full potential likely due to LaChiusa being a younger and less experienced songwriter in 1993. Now that he has more knowledge of how to craft character, you get a strong sense of personality. Even the invisible themes and character growth are much more profound, with the idea of mother-daughters being reflected throughout their entire run. To have it done through five consecutive administrations is an even greater feat that alone makes it better.
It’s a bit edgy and uneven at parts, but I think it achieves a cohesiveness that appeals to me. It isn’t just that I am fascinated by this homicidal vision of Amy Carter. It’s that the writing is sharper and the orchestration has so much more going on. I still think First Ladies Suite may be better if it gets an updated orchestral piece, though it still would need a lot of work to be anywhere as fun or meaningful. This is reflective of a master who knows how to twist a story, finding a heart within death and even a child’s imagination. There isn’t a musical like this, and I would love to see it on stage. What it lacks in memorable songs it more than makes up for in brilliant ideas. I can’t wait to listen again, to find even more layers to this beautiful creation.
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