Underwhelming ticket sales spurred producer Scott Rudin to announce Monday that his Broadway play “Hillary and Clinton” would be closing early.
The production, which stars Laurie Metcalf as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and John Lithgow as former President Bill Clinton, was originally scheduled to run through July 21, according to The Hollywood Reporter. But with the theater struggling to fill seats, the final performance will take place Sunday.
So far, the Lucas Hnath-written play has brought in $4.7 million at the box office. It cost $4.2 million to produce.
The drama takes place in a New Hampshire hotel room in 2009, comprising imagined interactions between the characters of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who are alternative-universe versions of the real politicians. Reviews have been mixed.
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Is the fate of “Hillary and Clinton” a sign of the times?
The Clintons have been dominant figures in the Democratic Party for nearly three decades. But for many interested observers, Hillary Clinton’s loss to President Donald Trump in the 2016 election made clear that it’s time for her to “ride off into the sunset.”
Both Republican and Democrat commentators have expressed their desire for the former secretary of state to go away. According to an October report in the Washington Examiner, multiple Democrats considered Clinton a campaign trail “kiss of death” in the run-up to 2018 midterm elections.
However, some Clinton supporters have pushed back on characterizations of the former secretary of state as “unlikable” or “unpopular,” claiming they’re motivated by sexism.
In a January op-ed for NBC Think, journalist Ashton Pittman compared Clinton to 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
He said: “The same day Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced plans to seek the 2020 Democratic nomination, the sexist media narratives of elections gone by staged a comeback in the form of a Politico article highlighting concerns that Warren may share too many ‘attributes’ with Hillary Clinton to be ‘likable.'”
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