Democracy Takes Center Stage in Two New Off Broadway Plays

It is only appropriate, perhaps, with a critical election coming up, that two new shows—relevant and timely would emerge. Here are two off-Broadway offerings we can look forward to.

“The Ghost of John McCain” was written by Grant Woods, the late attorney general of Arizona and a longtime friend of McCain’s.

I met, interviewed, and unfortunately wrote an obituary about Grant Woods. He had been John McCain’s closest aide and friend. Woods became Attorney General in Arizona–a Republican who won on issues like Civil Rights–and later became an anti-Trumper.

When I last saw Woods, (shortly before he died in 2021) we discussed his creative side: it turned out he was an accomplished musician. His idol was Kris Kristofferson, about whom, he told me, “We both went through the process of applying for a Rhodes Scholarship. Kristofferson got one, I was rejected when I refused to take back my claim that Bob Dylan and his ilk were the great poets of the day. When Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I wanted to track down the committee members who rejected me,” Woods told me. He was that kind of guy.

And his true passion was live theater. “There is no other art form that forces you to be so completely in a moment,” he told me. “It’s not tomorrow and it’s not yesterday.” At the time, he was working on a play called “The Ghost of John McCain.” Well, he would be thrilled to know that the show is going up at the Soho Playhouse beginning September 3 and hoping to run through—what else?—election day.

One of the key players with “The Ghost of John McCain” is composer Drew Fornarola. “I was commissioned to write this with Grant during the pandemic,” he says. “The show is a wild “Book of Mormon” style musical comedy. The elevator pitch? “ John McCain dies and believes he’s going to heaven, but instead winds up inside Donald Trump’s mind, along with many other historical figures past and present who live “rent free” there.”

Okay, still with us here? Those figures in that brain comprise a Greek chorus of sorts: from Roy Cohn to Hillary Clinton. One of the show’s producers, and another early participant, is Jason Rose. “Grant was my Little League coach,” he says, (sound familiar these political days?) “and we started talking about doing this show together. It is a daring piece of art, and I think not only Grant, but McCain himself, would like it. After all, he had a salty sense of humor and appeared often on SNL.”

The obituary I wrote, when I learned of Woods’ sudden death, ended with the words, “Grant Woods succeeded in the world of politics, and was enjoying a crucial second act, bringing the man he loved most to dramatic life. Now, the show will have to go on without him.” And now I repeat those sentiments again.

Another show that is of the moment is “Fatherland,” which opens on September 18 at City Center’s Stage 2.

This is what is called verbatim theatre, since virtually every word comes from actual dialogue and, in this case, testimony. Stephen Sachs, the director of the show, says even more of those words have come his way for this production. “Yes, there’s been some enhancing of the script,” he told me. “I was able to get additional material from the D.O.J on the case, because the show was such a success in Los Angeles.” In other words, he earned trust from the top.

As for the title, “Fatherland” deals with the true story of a Texas family: specifically the teenage son, played by Patrick Keleher who realizes his father is among those wanted by the FBI for his role in the attack on our nation’s capitol on Jan. 6. And the son made the gut wrenching decision to report him to the FBI. The characters in the play include the son, the father, the defense attorney, and the prosecutor. The timing, obviously, could hardly be more apt as our presidential election could, in the end, depend on who knew what on that horrid day in our country’s history.

For Ron Bottitta, (a Brit and former NYU student) who is playing the father, the challenge was keeping him human if not exactly someone to root for. “Audiences can find sympathy, I hope,” Bottitta says. “The feeling of his love for his son is so strong, it has to move you or at least make him understandable. He was in a bubble where you start to select against dissonant views. I went down the rabbit hole with him, even though I obviously don’t agree with him.

Sachs agrees that while audiences likely won’t sympathize with the dad, the play “humanizes this man. What they discover through the journey is that he’s a human being. I see him as a fallen figure, who fell from grace and desperately was reaching out for something greater than himself. He found it in the militia movement and Trump and felt empowered.”

New Yorkers are in for a compelling ride with “Fatherland.” And the timing is spot on. Sachs admits the play began because he was looking for a way to join the chaotic chorus engulfing the country, even before January 6. “I was hunting for something that would add our voice to the national conversation,” he says, “that spoke to the urgency of now. Then, I remembered this father-son story in the media. It is a reminder of what’s at stake. My greatest fear is this can happen all over again.”

Fingers crossed the show is a hit, but that a repeat of the insurrection remains only a flashback,