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Brinkley and Trump, Fact or Fiction

If 1865 had strong parallels with the impeachment but unsuccessful removal of Donald Trump from the presidency, and the successful impeachment and removal of President Andrew Johnson from the oval office, “The Resistible Rise of J.R. Brinkley” from Edward Einhorn of Untitled Theater Company #61 is the story of an eerily similar, but common historical and even modern political campaign tactics. Given the unique format of this four-part audio drama, separating the fact from fiction is hard and the story doesn’t dive too deeply into Brinkley aside from his xenophobic populist message of the 1920s that resembles Trump’s own prejudices.

Show Format

The episodes are broken down into an opening with the narrator — Dan Butler of Frasier and Einhorn himself — the play itself with interruptions by Butler and Einhorn as the former asks the latter questions about historical accuracy and creative liberties taken. A historically appropriate country music number with some altered lyrics and a conversation between Butler and an expert of some field relevant to the story that mostly relates to country music.

This originally premiered as a stage play in 2018 at the Fringe Festival. How much was cut or kept in this new audio version is unknown, but the supplementary music and interviews about the historical context of country music and politics in the nineteenth century. A lot of the music is tongue in cheek as is the dialogue — a blend of Brinkley himself, Trump, and some artistic license of both their words.

Episode 3, “Brinkley in Texas” on first listen is the weakest link and aside from the interview after the drama with the final episode, ” bordering on sappy, but real emotional performances of a character who lost his son for believing that Brinkley’s snake oil/placebo would cure his son. The trial itself is brief. The sharp turn into historical fantasy or horror, depending on your politics is jarring, regardless of what you believe. It’s almost like season 3 of Netflix’s “Daredevil” where Kingpin took over the FBI. The reveal is tense and you can’t stop thinking about the consequences of a criminal mastermind controlling a government agency meant to uphold the law. Are we still talking about Netflix?

Obviously, Brinkley and Kingpin are about as similar as Mountain Dew is to Hawaiin Punch, in terms of their historical time periods and character demeanors. Both have lots of sugar and are made with some water. It’s hard to rate this because the show jumps around in terms of format and tone that deciphering what is purposefully good and unintentionally bad is like asking what your favorite movie is. The answer — like government and politics — will vary year to year.

4/5 Stars