OLDEST IRISH AMERICAN NEWSPAPER IN USA, ESTABLISHED IN 1928
Category: Archive

Icon under fire: show does disservice to Jackie

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Where actress Andrea Reese?s impersonation of the late Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis comes up short is in deeper, subtler areas, namely the soul and the spirit, not to mention the heart.
?Cirque Jacqueline,? written as well as performed by actress Reese, is playing at the Triad Theater, one flight up at 158 West 72nd Str., Thursday evenings at 7 through the 22nd of the month, with a possible extension.
A considerable number of bizarre projects appear on New York?s theatrical horizon every season, but ?Cirque Jacqueline? must surely rank high on the list of strange ventures that have come this way within recent memory.
The peculiarity starts early and continues, pretty much without interruption, for the show?s 90-minute length.
Reese?s Jackie enters, dressed in the costume that has more or less become the event?s logo, and then, before speaking a word, she begins a kind of modest striptease, removing the hat, the jacket and the skirt, until she stands in her slip, ready to move back in time and ?tell? the still-mysterious and eternally private icon?s story, from her privileged, protected girlhood through to her lonely death in her heavily-guarded Fifth Avenue apartment, after enduring the ravages of cancer.
In truth, Mrs. Kennedy dealt with her terminal illness with the dignity and sense of self with which she appears to have confronted everything else in her life, at least publicly.
This comment applies to the good times, when she was presenting skeptical European dignitaries with an image of cultivation, refinement and elegance unlike anything they were normally accustomed to associating with America and Americans.
As for the bad times, and the difficult issues they raised, very much including her husband?s now-legendary infidelities, she kept her own counsel with a steady stoicism which, in the face of today?s out-of-control gossip-driven journalism, seems almost beyond belief.
Nothing thus far in print has been able to tarnish the image of Jacqueline Kennedy beyond snide comments about her reckless spending and her concern for interior decoration, visual style, and other aspects of life that many dismiss as superficial.
In short, the destroyers haven?t been able to bring Mrs. Kennedy down, at least not yet.
That?s why the flaws in ?Cirque Jacqueline? are so distressing. Writer-performer Reese very clearly never intended her show to be an expos

Other Articles You Might Like

Sign up to our Daily Newsletter

Click to access the login or register cheese