Review: ‘Tammany Hall’ Votes the Party Line

On Tuesday, New York’s citizens weighed in on a mayoral race between a vegan former police captain and a beret-wearing cat enthusiast.

Despite those cats — all 16 of them — the fun seems to have gone out of our local electoral politics recently. If you find yourself longing for a return to a time of grift and scandal, you could do worse than “Tammany Hall,” an immersive theatrical event at SoHo Playhouse.

After patrons present their vaccine cards and power down their phones, they are led up a staircase and into Election Day, 1929, at the Huron Club, a speakeasy controlled by Tammany Hall, New York City’s infamous political machine. (The Huron Club was a real establishment and it really stood at 15 Vandam Street, SoHo Playhouse’s current address.)

In 1929, the mayoral race was between Jimmy Walker, known as Beau James, the Tammany-backed incumbent, and Fiorello La Guardia, a petite Republican reformer. Before the night is through, ticket holders are asked to cast a ballot for one or the other. Or several ballots. That’s the Tammany way.

At 90 minutes, that night is brief, maybe too brief, and feels less like an immersive soak in Prohibition New York than a slug of bathtub gin. The evening begins with a quick debate, set in a boxing ring since Walker helped to legalize boxing. Walker (Martin Dockery), a rangy charmer, delivers a swift K.O. to Christopher Romero Wilson’s blustery La Guardia. And no surprise there, as Walker was a man who enraptured even The New York Times editorial board, who praised “his great personal charm, his talent for friendship, his broad sympathies.”

But unless you have pickled yourself in the minutiae of Depression-era party politics in advance of the evening, the debate won’t make much sense. I wish this weren’t so, because while Walker benefited from immense corruption, he also created the Department of Sanitation, expanded the subway and improved parks and playgrounds — a complexity that seems worth probing.

Created by Darren Lee Cole, SoHo Playhouse’s artistic director, and Alexander Flanagan-Wright, who directed an immersive version of “The Great Gatsby,” the piece seems most interested in delivering short scenes and louche vibes. Walker, a songwriter and theater lover, was a good-time guy who sanctioned Sunday movies and baseball games, as well as vehemently opposing Prohibition. Perhaps honoring his legacy, “Tammany Hall” seems less interested in political platforms than in making sure you’re merrily voting a party line, drink in hand. (And it doesn’t really matter how you do vote. As in recorded history, Walker wins by a landslide.)

You know those parties where you feel like the real action is just one room away? That was my experience of “Tammany Hall.” As the debate ended, my date and I were hijacked by a showgirl, Sami Petrucci’s Smarty, and taken downstairs to the theater for a preview of “Violet,” a new show starring Walker’s lover and future wife Betty Compton (Marie Anello). As my date was dragooned into a kickline, elsewhere, other groups and individuals went off to join other scenes, which may have been heavier on intrigue. What’s 1920s slang for the fear of missing out? I had that.

An immersive show asks you to escape reality, surrendering to a 360-degree fictional world. The fiction of “Tammany Hall,” indifferently acted, doesn’t entirely convince or offer much depth, and the environs (with wallpaper-heavy sets by Dan Daly, period costumes by Grace Jeon and subdued lighting by Emily Clarkson) feel low-budget. Maybe the real Huron Club was low-budget, too? But at just 90 minutes, “Tammany Hall” shoves you back onto the street before you can surrender to the celebration.

While patrons are masked and must show proof of vaccination, those masks come down for drinking — it is a speakeasy after all — and the actors don’t socially distance, making it that much harder to leave our current world behind. Do we really want the ’20s to roar? Think of all of those airborne droplets.

Tammany Hall
Through Jan. 9 at the SoHo Playhouse, Manhattan; sohoplayhouse.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.