“Hillary and Clinton,” a play about the two politicos set in a New Hampshire hotel during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential election bid, will have its last showing this Sunday - nearly a month earlier than its planned July 21 final performance, producer Scott Rudin announced Monday.
The Hollywood Reporter noted that when the play began in March, it drew mixed-to-positive reviews, but that in the last two weeks, it’s only reached 36% of its gross potential.
It stars John Lithgow as former President Bill Clinton and Laurie Metcalf as his wife Hillary, who would become President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State after losing to him in the 2008 primary elections, during which the play is set. The play received a nomination at last week’s Tony Awards for Metcalf’s portrayal of Hillary.
When the curtain falls for the last time on June 23, the play will have had 37 previews and 77 regular performances at the John Golden Theater, one of Broadway’s smallest venues. Having cost $4.2 million to produce, its cumulative box office take stands at only $4.7 million.
The play originally premiered in Chicago back in 2016, with a completely different cast, Fox noted.
Lithgow told the Hill following the play’s debut in April that it wouldn’t be a “‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch,” noting, “You’ll see no makeup at all, no accents, no imitations.”
Metcalf admitted at the time that, with the drama of Clinton’s failed 2016 bid for the presidency still unfolding, the title might be “misleading” to some people.
Even at the time, though, the idea of the play was widely panned on social media, Sputnik reported.
