Montco woman has big role in 'Clinton the Musical'

NEW YORK - Hillary Rodham Clinton might want to consider hiring Lower Gwynedd-based stage producer Kari Lynn Hearn as a campaign adviser. Or keep her in mind for an embassy posting.

No coincidence that Clinton declared her candidacy for president a mere four days after Hearn's first stab as a top-billed producer - Clinton the Musical - opened to mostly rave reviews Off-Broadway.

"Absolutely, we timed it, knowing an announcement was coming," Hearn said recently, wearing a sly grin.

The Clintons haven't seen the show "and probably won't," Hearn said, shrugging, after a recent performance at New World Stages on West 50th Street. "But we hear the people they've sent to check it out have laughed a lot."

And given that the show covers the, um, stickiest scandals of the Clinton years, that's saying a lot about the production's, and the producers', tact and diplomacy.

"Our view of the Clintons' presidential era is satirical, but it's not mean-spirited or cruel," Hearn said.

Clinton campaign staffers did not respond to requests for comment.

"People come away understanding Hillary [portrayed by Kerry Butler] so much better, because we show the softer side of her public humiliation," she said. "And some people feel their first-ever pangs of sympathy for Monica [Lewinsky, portrayed by Veronica Kuehn] as this innocent young child who fell in love with the leader of the free world."

A lifelong show buff, Hearn, 42, a Midwest native, first ventured to Broadway to be a singer. Then she fell in love and married reinsurance broker David Hearn and settled into Philadelphia suburban life, serving as drama teacher at Norwood-Fontbonne Academy in Chestnut Hill, as well as private acting coach to daughters Emma, 18, and Sophie, 17.

Clinton the Musical marks Hearn's debut as a lead producer, after roles backing the KO'd Rocky and the current Nathan Lane/Matthew Broderick hit, It's Only a Play.

That means she finally gets to work her full skill set: performer, playwright, acting coach, and investor.

"Most producers just write checks," said the musical's director-choreographer, Dan Knechtges. "Kari Lynn was a very creative participant and voice of reason for this show, always pursuing what she thought would be the best, and a great cheerleader when you'd hit a roadblock."

Hearn had a vote on auditioners. Most memorable was "the room full of would-be Monicas all wearing a blue dress." Hearn vetted joke lines she found tasteless and, as Knechtges added, "things we needed to hear from a woman's perspective."

She also handled typical producing chores: courting potential investors, some of whom were quite wary of the show's political bent; budgeting; and landing "just the right theater at the right time - harder in New York than raising money," she said.

Ongoing duties as "producer and surrogate mommy," she said, include hovering nightly at the theater, making sure showgoers with children know what they're in for - especially Monica's F-bomb-dropping song - and juggling promotion, including a Mad magazine-style show poster-billboard looming large on Broadway at 52d Street "that's gotten us broadcast and print stories all by itself."

Even with an Off-Broadway-size stage and 349 seats, Clinton the Musical cost $1 million to mount and has a weekly operating "nut" of $70,000 to $90,000 "if we push the advertising," Hearn said. "Even then, it's hard to be heard over the din of Broadway shows spending $100,000 a week just for ads."

An equal-opportunity ribber (think The Daily Show meets The Book of Mormon), Clinton the Musical walks a fine line between snarky and daft humor, with a President Clinton so double-jointed it takes two men to play him: the serious William Jefferson is played by Tom Galantich, the goosey-loosey Billy by Duke Lafoon.

The disloyal opposition - symbolized by Newt Gingrich and Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr - also is ripe for roasting. Ditto the cardboard cutout (literally) of Vice President Al Gore; Hillary Clinton's ghostly yet still suffering role model, Eleanor Roosevelt; and a bunch of nattering broadcast news-cyclers.

Clinton the Musical, written by Australian twenty-something brothers Paul and Michael Hodge, has evolved "lots" from when she jumped on the campaign bus last summer after a workshop production, Hearn said.

Most obviously, it was trimmed down to a breathless 93 minutes, which she said "makes for the ideal New York theatergoing experience."

"You get in, you laugh a lot, you go grab dinner," she said.

Soon to be an "empty-nester," Hearn said she hopes to give even more to the theater business - building on the heritage of Philadelphia impresarios like Moe Septee, Franklin Roberts, Larry Magid, and Herman Levin.

Next on her agenda, she said, is an adaptation of the Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymour film romance Somewhere in Time.

"But you don't ever do this with the idea of making money," Hearn cautioned. "You get into producing for the love and passion of theater, for the everything else that comes along. You do it for the relationships you make, to bring a story to life, to move people with the art."

And maybe, should fate decree, help one sympathetic show subject become president.