CRITICS

Jackson McHenry on Here Lies Love … Alison Willmore on Talk to Me … Kathryn VanArendonk on Project Greenlight: A New Generation

THEATER / JACKSON MCHENRY

An Unsettlingly Good Time

Here lies a rousing dance party about a corrupt co-tyrant, but you’re the main character.

ON THE DANCE FLOOR of Here Lies Love, the musical for which the Broadway Theatre was remade into a disco, you’ll often find yourself just a few feet away from the show’s three main characters, who appear on platforms above the audience, singing songs built out of political sloganeering. You’re also face-to-face with another class of performers. As the musical follows the rise of Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the Philippines, a group of employees in pink jumpsuits shuffles through the stage doing crowd control—nudging people to face the right direction for a character’s entrance or clearing a path for another performer to zip through the audience before breaking into song. The show sets the Marcoses’ rule in a club (Imelda frequented Studio 54 and had a mirror ball installed in her Upper East Side townhouse), which puts the nimble, silent, and very capable jumpsuited crowd managers in a fascinating dramaturgical position. I kept thinking of them as little avatars of the show’s authors, assembling the facts into a narrative; or as Marcos-era enforcers; or as physical embodiments of American meddling abroad, keeping the regime running as long as it benefits overseas interests. They’re here to make sure you have a good time with some bad people.