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In praise of ... American theatres | Editorial
Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Christopher Hitchens says that if you want to give a girl a good night out in Washington you should take her to New York. Barack Obama obviously thinks the same. Having promised his wife Michelle during the election campaign last year that he would take her to a Broadway show when it was all finished, he duly headed north at the weekend for a performance of Joe Turner's Come and Gone, a play by August Wilson about the migration of freed slaves from the deep south. A promise is a promise, so it is perhaps unfair to criticise the president too much for fulfilling his private campaign pledge. Nevertheless, a president who wants to wean Americans off their emissions-heavy travel habits was not setting a good example by taking two helicopter trips and a plane to New York and back, as the Obamas did. Nor, however excellent the Broadway performance, was the trip fair to Washington, whose theatres are one of its own great attractions. A few blocks from the White House, the Shakespeare theatre, under Michael Kahn's direction, is a particularly fine company, but the Arena and the Studio also do excellent innovative work. There are grander theatres at the Kennedy Center, the Warner and the National as well as the delightful small Folger, part of the Shakespeare library on Capitol Hill. Presidential trips to the Washington theatre have a bad history, of course, but the Obamas could have plenty of good nights out in their own city with a fraction of the carbon footprint it took to go to New York.