First Daughter Suite, Michael LaChiusa’s musical focusing as much on the First Ladies Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan, and Bush as on their daughters, can be considered a sequel of sorts to Michael LaChiusa’s 1993 breakthrough musical First Lady Suite. The four scenes in the new musical take liberties with the subjects, and each ends with a surprise twist, some of which are outrageous. Still, for all its lapses, First Daughter Suite offers great satisfactions, the most prominent being a wonderful all-female cast.
Click on any photograph by Joan Marcus to see it enlarged and read the caption.
First Daughter Suite Betsy Moran as Tricia Nixon, Barbara Walsh as Pat Nixon and Caissey Levy as Julie Nixon Eisenhower in “Happy Pat”
Barbara Walsh as Pat Nixon and Theresa McCarthy as Hannah Nixon (her mother-in-law) in “Happy Pat” in First Daughter Suite
Carly Tamer as Amy Carter and Alison Fraser as Betty Ford in “Amy Carter’s Fabulous Dream Adventure” from First Daughter Suite
Carly Tamer as Amy Carter and Rachel Bay Jones as Rosalynn Carter in “Amy Carter’s Fabulous Dream Adventure” in First Daughter Suite
Alison Fraser as Nancy Reagan and Caissie Levy as her daughter Patti Davis in “Patti By The Pool” from First Daughter Suite
Theresa McCarthy as Robin Bush and Marty Testa as Barbara Bush in “In The Deep Bosom of the Ocean Buried” in First Daughter Suite
In an often-satirical First Daughter Suite, there is a touching moment when Marty Testa as Barbara Bush opens up to Rachel Bay Jones as her daughter-in-law Laura Bush about her daughter Robin (Theresa McCarthy) who died as a child, but to whom she speaks as if she were still alive and grown into adulthood.
