Here Comes J Edgar! is a puzzling production. On one hand, it is a right roaring romp with exquisite production values and outstanding musicality anchored by a delightful and magnetic leading man (Bryan Batt). On the other hand, despite it being written by satirical royalty (Harry Shearer and Tom Leopold) and making its world premiere at top queer theatre venue the King’s Head, it seems largely to ignore the widespread and deeply malevolent acts by one of America’s top government homophobes against hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ people for nearly half of the 20th century and well past Stonewall.
Yes, J Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s first director, was a self-absorbed, media-hungry blackmailer who in all likelihood enjoyed a long-term gay spousal relationship with his deputy, Clyde Tolson (Hugo Bolton). And, yes, he also oversaw the Lavender Scare (the anti-Communist Red Scare’s evil sibling that caused over 10,000 people to lose their jobs due to accusations of being “sex deviates”). But somehow, in the pursuit of putting on a helluva show, this production’s lack of context might lead Hoover to be confused with a quasi-harmless closet case. Fact check: he was not.
Director Josh Seymour’s production opens on Hoover (Bryan Batt) in a hospital bed with sassy nurses (Martha Pothen and Holly Willock) chain-smoking and looking for euphemisms to describe his relationship with Tolson — they settle on “lifetime assistant”. I was initially reminded of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Angels in America and the dynamics of mid-1980s AIDS ward nurse, Belize, interacting with the evil Roy Cohn as he faces mortality whilst relishing his role in using illegal tactics to ensure the execution of Ethel Rosenberg. Cohn (who remains greatly admired by the current American president and served as his New York fixer and mentor) never admitted to his homosexuality and showed nothing but contempt for other gay men. Yet through the emotional responses and confusion Cohn provokes in others (and a hefty dollop of dream sequences or visions) we see his complexity and evil – several shades more complicated than simple hypocrisy and so grotesque it provokes the tension that is the prerequisite for laughter. In contrast, Batt’s Hoover seems just a bit naughty with only flashes of malignance.
At the centre of the play is an almost wholesome love story about Tolson and Hoover, with minor spats about domestic matters such as adopting children and/or pets. The songs and the romance are well executed but seem too pure and relatable – is that the ironic point? It is a strange thing that I found myself nearly rooting for their happiness. The meet-cute in the men’s room is very winning with clever bits of theatrical business and a wonderfully diverting bathroom attendant offering baritone musical bons mots from a toilet cubicle. In these scenes, there are glimpses of the deliciously mad absurdity one would expect from the minds of Shearer and Leopold. And throughout, Bill Deamer’s choreography is top-notch and joyous.
Yet the first act majors too much on Hoover’s development as a G-Man and his pursuit of gangsters, almost following beat-by-beat the structure of Curt Gentry’s 1991 biography, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. If this were a jaunty biopic in three acts, Hoover’s gangster years and seduction by (or exploitation of) the gossip industry would form an interesting foundation to his self-consciousness and corrupt but self-righteous character. However, the second act has to race through Hoover’s role in derailing the civil rights movement with a mere nod to his persecution of Dr Martin Luther King (who gets no face-time along with any other characters of colour) with no mention of everything from the FBI’s direct role in subverting rights in Selma, painting Viola Liuzzo who was murdered by the KKK as a miscegenatist whore for driving Black citizens to the polls, obstructing the investigation of the murders of civil rights heroes Rev James Reeb and Rev Robert Spike (the latter of whom Hoover is alleged to have tried to blackmail with his sexuality for supporting African-American equality in Mississippi) and the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton, amongst others.
I’m not suggesting Here Comes J Edgar! should be as long or as ambitious as Angels in America – Seymour keeps it pacey and pleasing with lots of razzle-dazzle and unadulterated camp (I’m particularly fond of the knitting pattern on Tolson’s G-man sweater amongst many outstanding costumes by Tom Paris). But if the audience doesn’t know anything about the Führer to begin with, Springtime for Hitler would be too subtle for too long and risks its central parody slipping away. This is my anxiety about Here Comes J Edgar!. Perhaps its two acts should be inverted so we get straight to the heart of Hoover’s misdeeds and then find ourselves conflicted by a natural wish or hope that if he’d been able to live his life out loud he might not have been such an evil snake.
Perhaps it just needs one more song – a bit torchy and emotional – that focuses on his victims. The show is essentially light and fun and visually splendid. And in that lies its strength and its threat. If only the satire were more biting, its toe-tapping, anthem-humming joys would feel all the more earned.
Here Comes J. Edgar! runs until the 16th August 2026 at King’s Head Theatre, 116 Upper St, London N1 1QP, United Kingdom.
Mary Beer
All images supplied.
