Who is the The Inaugural Election for President of Mrs. Jacobson’s Sixth Grade Class for? Walking out of the Atlas last night, my only answer was “for no one.”
Six adults play six sixth graders competing to become the president of Mrs. Jacobson’s class, meaning they will be in charge of a hamster. (Its predecessor has died at the hands of an irresponsible student.) An all-ages Capital Fringe show, Inaugural Election is not funny or short enough for children. Its message about how 11-year-olds behave — a boy sniffing glue, a girl being slut-shamed by a teacher for having a picture of a tongue texted to her phone by said glue-sniffing boy, everyone quoting Mark Twain and being cruel to one another — is confusing; the dialogue isn’t juvenile enough to be believable or subversive enough to be interesting. I would have preferred the latter — a biting satire about modern elections delivered through children — and that appears to be director Kevin Finkelstein’s intention. But that’s nowhere to be seen. Instead, we get Pokemon references sprinkled with lectures about Gandhi and democracy.
The cast does the best it can with the material, even fully committing to an inexplicable musical performance of “One Is The Loneliest Number” around the one-hour mark. Cast members are also sent out in the audience to drum up support for candidates and hand out ballots, an invasion of personal space that can be hard to overcome even with the best of material. Even as I grimaced in my seat, cast members tasked with approaching me stayed in character.
I’ll highlight a monologue delivered by Momo Nakamura, playing the nerdy Alice, about family expectations as a bright spot in the 85-minute show. But if you want to tackle the topic of elections in Washington, D.C., you need to do a lot better than Inaugural Election.
The Inaugural Election for President of Mrs. Jacobson’s Sixth Grade Class is playing at the Atlas Performing Center’s Lab II. Remaining performances:
Saturday, July 19 at 8:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 20 at 4:45 p.m.
Saturday, July 26 at 1:45 p.m.
