To lionize politicians in the service of upholding the fraudulence of power and the futility of governance is one of the most insidious crimes a work of art can commit. When aimed at gaining influence over a susceptible populace, such unscrupulous bootlicking is easily recognized as propaganda—less so when the audience is already seated in the space reserved for the choir.
The urbane theatergoers of Manhattan, constitutionally wizened by the victories of neofascism but still sufficiently invigorated in their morals and morale for a Thursday night at Lincoln Center, may not be the sort to figure themselves complacently taken in by duplicitous entertainment, and yet the post-Hamilton death throes of our dramatic institutions insist that the show must go on. Masks are optional, but mixed metaphor, cliché, and sentimentality—boastful appeals to the virtue of hope, the need for civility, and the inevitability of progress—are guaranteed with the price of admission.
Eighty-one-year-old Holland Taylor, who plays N (for Nancy Pelosi) in Mario Correa’s two-woman N/A at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, has been typecast as an implacable authoritarian since Tom Foley was Speaker of the House. Ana Villafañe as A (for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) resembles her IRL counterpart more precisely than a Disney animatron ever could. Both are inferior actors to the congresswomen in whose likenesses they are thinly veiled, a truth that Correa—who cut his chops in the Capitol, aiding Republican legislator Connie Morella for over a decade in preparation for showbiz proper—does not seem to comprehend. And though our former president—“that man”—is never mentioned by name, this flat paean to pioneering women is, ultimately, all about him.