Jackie O. Unmasked

Eventually, every American icon must face the music and reveal everything, including the ugly truths. What better place to do this than on the stage, before an audience hungry and impatient for more information on the lives of the great and inaccessible. "Jackie: An American Life," currently at the Hasty Pudding Theater, is a laughography that chronicles the life and times of Jackie--from Bouvier to Kennedy to Jackie once again. Those who worship at the Altar of Jackie would be better off staying away from "Jackie: An American Life," and instead dote on those cherished Life magazines or testimonials like Wayne Koestenbaum's recent book "Jackie Under My Skin." If, however, you don't mind shameless forget-about-the-consequences humor and a more than healthy dose of icon exploitation, Jackie is a must-see.

The tone of the play is set immediately. It is unmistakable and entirely unsophisticated, which is precisely what makes the play fun even if predictable and brainless. The first scene takes place in an auction house where Jackie's posessions are being sold. On the block are her Items Under the Sink, and of course these go for thousands. The bidders, a professional looking bunch, alternate their frenetic bidding with plaintive lamb bleats. Director and writer Gip Hoppe lets us know that the vehicle here is farce, and once the play climbs in it doesn't look back.

And then we're off. We are taken on a worldwind tour of Jackie's life, from Bouvier bickering at Hammersmith Farm to living the beautiful life in New York City to "learning" at Miss Porter's School, where the schoolgirls are played by men in drag. The most hysterical stop along the way is the scene set at the Kennedy home on "the merry old land of Cod," where Joe Kennedy sizes up Jackie as a potential presidential wife. The Kennedy clan is painted in broad strokes as an obnoxious group of loudmouthed, thick-waisted jocks speaking with an accent that sounds more Brooklyn than Boston. Ethel, burdened by several babies dangling from various parts of her body, is crudely portrayed as a birthing machine ready to "drop" a new Kennedy whenever possible. These rougher Kennedy sorts serve to emphasize Jackie's unique brand of refinement and grace, qualities that helped secure her place in America's heart and (as the play insists) the White House as well.

The raucous comedy does not let up. The play has vast reserves of Saturday morning cartoon antics combined with the smug humor of Saturday Night Live. Though the action is struck in a loud key, the actors aren't obscured or overwhelmed. As Jackie, Lane Burgess is convincing and endearing. She succeeds at the difficult task of humanizing Jackie the icon, adding flesh and blood to the mysterious outline produced by pop culture. Roberta Kastelic is also memorable as Christina (Coke can-in-hand) Onasiss. Her character introduces a dark touch to the second half of the play as she terrorizes the stage with her curses accusations.

Costuming, sets and props, which bear a lot of the weight and scrutiny in this type of period-piece, are first rate. Credit should also be granted to the care taken to make the play's grotesques truly grotesque: LBJ is represented as a disembodied head atop a glob of what looks like ground beef and pasta that is rolled onto the stage in a wheelbarrow; Lee Radziwell (Jackie's sister) as a child is shown as a three-foot-tall (gnomish) creature wearing a straw hat and a cardboard baby doll dress; Hugh Auchincloss is completely inanimate as a wrinkly amorphous head with a bodyless suit dangled below.

Without a doubt Jackie: An American Life rejoices in investigating all of the comic possibilities of caricature and farce. The play's irreverence is accountable to no one perhaps except itself. As we would expect, Jackie rises above the outright madness and sordidness surrounding her; and it is one of the show's triumphs that this is plausible. Throughout she has remained somewhat aloof in an inaccessible world, protected by her acute moral sense.

In a way, the audience is implicated in the burlesqued view of a family. At the beginning Jackie agrees to let us in, to watch and to laugh, turning to the audience and asking "What do you want from me?" Indeed she gives us what we ask for, but makes us feel a bit ashamed--do we really want this goulish pop-history? At the end of "Jackie: An American Life," we are asked to keep our part of the promise, to leave. And we do, satisfied, and somewhat relieved.