First Daughter Suite

[Chris L]

Seeing that Barbara Bush had died called back memories of Michael John LaChiusa's First Daughter Suite, which @AmyG and I saw when we visited New York in 2015. I honestly hadn't given much thought to Barbara Bush when she was first lady or afterwards. Her husband was a president I disliked intensely, not so much for his personality but for his politics, which seem only mildly offensive by current standards (a subject which I've forbidden myself to elaborate on in these virtual walls).

First Daughter Suite was in many ways a continuation of LaChiusa's much earlier First Lady Suite because it featured the first ladies as much as it featured the first daughters. It ended on the scene with Barbara Bush, though, and it was the right place to finish. Although I'm seeing headlines about it now, I hadn't realized then that the elder Bush's had had a daughter, Robin, who died at the age of 3. I suppose this is a bit of a spoiler, because much of the impact of the scene relied on LaChiusa's awareness that most of the audience didn't know this either. It only gradually became apparent across the course of the scene that the daughter that Barbara Bush was talking with wasn't actually a living person.

It was the first time I'd had any particular emotion toward Mrs. Bush, but what LaChiusa evoked was a deep sympathy for a woman who had lived much of her life with a tragedy that could never be undone and that haunted her into old age. I had tears in my eyes when the play ended.

I had never really expected to feel sympathy for Barbara Bush, or for LaChiusa to evoke that sympathy. (He certainly didn't evoke any for Nancy Reagan.) It was when my estimation of the show went from good to great. There's much of LaChiusa's work that I haven't seen, but I think at that moment it may have become my favorite of the ones I have. (See What I Wanna See is still close, but not for the same reasons.)