Investigating Donald Trump’s love of musical theatre
Going back and watching old editions of the Tony Awards is a minefield, and not just because you’re never quite sure when you’re next going to be jumpscared by a jazz-handing Kevin Spacey. You’re also never quite sure when you’re next going to be jumpscared by Donald Trump.
From their 1980s heyday until well into the 2000s, Trump was all over the American theatre world’s biggest night of the calendar year. Sometimes he’s handing out awards, taking part in ill-advised skits, or the camera cuts to him in the audience, acting like he wouldn’t much rather be elsewhere. However, if anyone asks him about his attendance, it’s because he’s a die-hard fan of the American musical theatre and has been for decades.
Which makes sense. It’s part of the dichotomy of Donald Trump. The blue-collar billionaire is supposedly a symbol of unreconstructed American masculinity. Who also wears more make-up than your average chorus line, tweets about how the Academy Awards have lost their “mystique” and “glamour” and will rhapsodise at the drop of a hat about Betty Buckley’s performance as Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic musical Cats. A role that Buckley took in 1983.
None of this should be contradictory. Masculinity absolutely should be a broad church that welcomes unpretentious bluntness and a love of the lively arts and everything in between. Y’know who really doesn’t seem to believe that? Who really does seem to believe that masculinity is rigidly defined and anyone who goes against that doctrine is lying to themselves or anyone else? Who has also done incalculable damage to the presence of the arts in the American school system?
Why that would be the 45th and 47th President of the United States, Donald John Trump, of course.
So, why does Donald Trump claim to love musical theatre?
It’s a fine question, because on the one hand, he really does seem to love it. Word was that during his first term in the Oval Office, a White House staffer was the designated ‘Music Man’ whose job it was to play musical theatre classics when the president threw a tantrum. The ‘Music Man’ was very busy for those four years. The go-to was apparently ‘Memory’ but he was also partial to Phantom of the Opera, and Evita, which is where the first tell-tale signs start showing up to those really in the know.
Because those are all Andrew Lloyd Webber shows. In fact the only musical that Trump has shown much love for other than one written by Sir Andy is Les Misérables. Otherwise known as the single most succesfu non-Lloyd Webber musical ever made and there you have it. It’s success. It’s all just success. Trump doesn’t like these things because they speak to him, nothing does and nothing ever will, it’s all just signifiers.
Maybe there’s some nostalgia at play of seeing those shows when he was a young man, but other than that, there’s nothing other than the feeling of being near something successful. That’s what the Trump brand represents, and also the very thing that Trump holds dearest.
It doesn’t matter what something is, does or represents, so long as it’s successful. As for the way that the American theatre community feels about him? I’ll let Patti LuPone sum up their feeling when asked why they wouldn’t perform for the president at the 2017 Tony Awards, “Because I hate the motherfucker, how’s that?”