Obama show

The lyrics in "Hope - The Obama Musical Story," which premiered over the weekend in the German city of Karlsruhe nearly one year after Obama took office, talk about the concerns of many in America as the 2008 elections approached - a stumbling economy, job losses, home foreclosures. In fact, the chorus of the song repeats the words "we're in chaos."

"Each person depicts a general circumstance that people found themselves in, losing their jobs, their homes. The story is about people," Randall Hutchins, the author and composer of the musical, told Deutsche Welle.

One of the musical's two storylines centers around a diverse group of people living in a Chicago community. Among them, there's a Puerto Rican man who has lost his job and his faith in politics, an African-American activist and a conservative widow who emigrated from Germany.

Hutchins said he wanted to show how the Obama campaign was able to inspire a large cross section of people and restore their faith in the future at a time of large-scale disenchantment and cynicism.

"The vibe was incredible, if you remember, it was really a special time. So the inspiration came from that," Hutchins said.

Path to power

Of course, the real star of the show is Barack Obama, and the musical follows his path from community organizer in a cardigan to victorious, suit-wearing American president.

In one scene, set when he was an ambitious young man working in Chicago, he meets a certain corporate lawyer named Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, played by Houston, Texas native Della Miles.

"It shows how they were working together at first and how they connected and how it became a relationship," said Miles. "There is a place where you see how they fell in love."

The musical features portrayals of a number of top politicians and figures from the election, including a very young looking Hillary Clinton and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who both have dance numbers. Obama's opponent John McCain has a singing role as does Jeremiah Wright, the pastor whose fiery rhetoric caused a great deal of controversy for the Obama campaign.

The show has an international, 30-member cast and the songs and dialogue are in English, although there's a narrator who moves the story along in German, just to make sure everyone in the audience understands the context.

Even though some Germans might have trouble following all of the dialogue, they can certainly follow and interact with the energetic music and dance sequences. Most of the seats in Frankfurt's Jahrhunderthalle performance space have been outfitted with specially designed chairs on which audience members can drum along with the music.

The musical climaxes with Obama leading a rousing song inspired by the campaign's slogan, "Yes We Can."

"It's an honor to portray him," said Jimmie Wilson, the actor from Detroit who portrays the 44th president. "It's an opportunity in my career because there's a lot of focus on this. We're getting a lot comments online, a lot of negative comments, but we don't listen to that."

Internet criticism

Indeed, the musical has been taking a beating on the Internet. Comments on blogs and YouTube disparage it as being propaganda, pure cheese, deification or a lot of things that shouldn't be said in polite society.

"Many people are thinking we just put Obama on stage in a positive way, but much of the dialogue is taken from things he actually said - a one-to-one correspondence," director Roberto Emmanuele told Deutsche Welle. "Maybe the musical could even put some pressure on him to go further with the nice spirit that he brought about."

Composer Hutchins also denies he's written a musical glorifying some kind of Saint Barack, but admits that the president's falling approval ratings at home had to be taken into account.

"I wanted initially to do it in the US. But if I would have, I think it would have been more controversial there," he said. "Right now, President Obama's popularity is much higher in Europe."

He's not anticipating a run on Broadway anytime soon. For now, he hopes the show will draw good-sized audiences around Germany. After all, this is the country where two hundred thousand people turned out when Obama gave a speech in Berlin in 2008.

Then, Hutchins said, he's looking toward a possible tour of the show in Africa, where the perils of Washington politics haven't dulled the president's shine.

Author: Kyle James
Editor: Kate Bowen