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Looking Over the President's Shoulder

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Media Reviews



Creative Loafing:
Looking Over the President's Shoulder offers an inside scoop on the White House
10/13/2008
It's hard to imagine a person less eager to get into the White House than Alonzo Fields, narrator of Theatre in the Square's one-man show Looking Over the President's Shoulder. Played by Barry Scott, Fields claims early on that he never sought the position of White House butler, even though he eventually served at the U.S. president's residence for 21 years and four administrations. "I didn't want to be a domestic. I wanted to be an artist," he says, but the Great Depression forced him to take the job in 1931.

Looking Over the President's Shoulder suggests that serving the president of the United States became Fields' art form. Adapted from Fields' memoir and directed by Gary Yates, the production dusts off entertaining but essentially harmless anecdotes from Fields' time serving Hoover, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and their families. From the perspective of chief butler, Fields not surprisingly focuses on how the presidents ate, drank and entertained, and reveals the true feelings behind the staff's impassive expressions.

Hoover preferred punctual formality, the Roosevelts ignored fancy protocol in favor of crowded, raucous gatherings, and the Trumans exuded warmth and respect (one gets the impression Fields didn't get to know Ike as well as the others). Scott lapses into plummy impressions of the White House's famous occupants and guests, giving Eleanor Roosevelt a whinnying laugh. He provides a particularly amusing take on Winston Churchill, but the impressions seem inessential. Scott has such presence and commanding diction that his one-man show almost resembles an evening with Sidney Poitier. The funny voices make him sound like he's trying too hard.

Looking Over the President's Shoulder discusses the slow progress of the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the 20th century as well as challenges of enduring hard times, including an economic slump and a world war. After Pearl Harbor, Fields overhears an FDR adviser say, "We can fall back as far as Chicago!" if Japan invades the U.S. mainland. Like most biographical plays, it offers a CliffsNotes version of a person's life, and, ironically, the audience provides the show's most powerful idea. In Fields's time, virtually the only way an African-American could get inside the Oval Office was as a domestic. The current election proves how much times have changed.



Publishers' Feature Service:
Looking Over the President's Shoulder
10/13/2008
I guess I am one of these old geezers who kind of feels disappointed when I go to a show only to learn that the cast consists of only one performer. Seen enough of those. Probably slept through a few of them. Not this one!

For this play by James Still chronicles the working experience of a man who spent 21 years working in the White House serving presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. A black man who came from a small town, wanted to be an opera singer, attended the Boston Conservatory but wound up serving tea and other meals, then winding up as the chief butler before packing it in.

This is the story of a real man, Alonzo Fields, played absolutely to perfection by Barry Scott, in a show that draws you in, holds you captive and inspires you in so many ways. Scott's ability to assume various personae as he relates his saga, and the great sound and lighting of the production serve to captivate you even more.

Fields was working there in the depression, at the start of the rise of the Nazis, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the secret visits of Sir Winston Churchill, the idiosyncrasies of the Roosevelts and the Trumans, and so much more.

This is a two-hour show with one intermission. I stand in awe of Mr. Scott and wonder how anybody could possibly remember all the monologue he must deliver. For I am one of those guys who can't usually recall my own fax number or the day of the week.

A wonderful show, wonderfully written and incredibly well acted. A must see.



Atlanta Theatre Buzz:
Silent Witness
10/13/2008
Grade: A

To be sure, not much happens in James Still's Looking Over the President's Shoulder, currently on view at Marietta's Theatre in the Square. A man, waiting for a bus, talks to us, alone and unsupported. At the end, he catches his bus and moves on with his life. That's it.

But, oh my stars and bars, what he talks about! His name is Alonzo Fields (played with quiet intensity by Barry Scott). And, for twenty-two years (1931 - 1953), he was a servant at the White House. He was a silent witness to four presidencies, two wars, one economic recovery, and countless state visits by the dignitaries from abroad and the not-so-dignitaries from Hollywood. He knew Marian Anderson before the world ever heard a note. And, today, no one knows his name.

The appeal of this play, of this collection of anecdotes, is its uncanny ability to let us share Mr. Fields' witness, to make us similar "flies on the wall" of great events and great people, to make those great people human - Errol Flynn drunkenly cavorting about the White House, Mr. and Mrs. Hoover dressing formally for family dinners, Eleanor Roosevelt creating a maelstrom of activity just be being home, Winston Churchill skinny-dipping in Florida, The King of England steadfastly suppressing a stammer to toast his World War II Allies, Mr. Truman sending flowers to the funeral of Fields' mother. These are the details that stick out, the moments of history we seldom think about, seldom know, seldom acknowledge.

The irony is that throughout his career, Alonzo Fields had to stand by silently, not even giving a hint of what he heard, what he witnessed. He could even have been fired for smiling at a joke told at dinner. And, he was in the last place he wanted to be. A musician by training and inclination, he would rather be in Boston (or his native Indiana) singing or teaching music. But he had a family to support and job opportunities were scarce for opera singers, least of all African-American opera singers. In one cruel throw-away line, he comments that it was all right to invite Marian Anderson to the White House to sing, but she would never be asked to dine.

Another thing that stood out for me was how life at the White House could change so drastically from administration to administration. The Hoovers were sober Quakers who rarely entertained, who treated their staff with quiet respect. The Roosevelt White House was a beehive of activity and tension and witness to a parade of world leaders and celebrities; but they were, at heart, aristocrats who treated the staff well, but with tolerance rather than acceptance. The Trumans were egalitarians, who introduced their staff to visitors by name, who treated them as equals. The Eisenhowers were unpredictable, but distant (at the Inaugural luncheon, Mr. Fields even gives a foreshadowing "He needs to grow up" observation about new Vice-President Nixon).

Mr. Scott captures Alonzo Fields in all his quiet dignity. He never raises his voice, always keeps our interest, loses himself in reverie at a sudden memory, a sudden hint of song. If his "role-playing" is more Barry Scott than Alonzo Fields, I can accept the device. Alone on stage for two 45-minute monologues, he rarely varies his volume or pitch, but he is never monotonous, always engaging. This is a performance to remember, as I'm sure I will.

Before seeing this play, I had never heard of Alonzo Fields or Barry Scott. To be sure, this play has sparked my interest, and I have been googling them both all morning.

Before seeing this play, I thought I knew the Presidents, their politics and characters, the way they treated the world. After hearing the words of this previously silent witness, I realize how little I know.

Alonzo Fields left the White House in 1953, soon after the administration of Dwight Eisenhower began. He lived for over forty years after that. But the play, the narrative, ends with that bus ride away from history. That, my friends, is our loss.



Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
"Looking Over the President's Shoulder"
10/02/2008
If it falls your lot to sweep streets in life,” urged Martin Luther King, Jr. in a speech at Atlanta’s Big Bethel AME Church in 1957, “sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Beethoven composed music.”

That self-empowering, laborer-as-artisan spirit perfectly describes Alonzo Fields. Educated in Boston to sing opera, he instead found a job as a butler in the White House at the nadir of the Great Depression. Grandson of a slave, he was soon promoted to chief butler and served four presidents over 21 years.

James Still’s one-man play Looking Over the President’s Shoulder imagines Fields on his last day on the job. Premiered in 2001, it is running at Marietta’s Theatre in the Square through Nov. 9.

Still’s language for Fields is direct and unadorned — “Culled from Fields’ private papers, diaries and interviews,” a program note says. A few youthful memories aside, we hear next to nothing of his life outside the executive mansion.

“I heard everything that went on,” Fields tells us early on. But that tease deflates to the realm of the de-personalized and generic when he adds, “it was like being in the front row and watching the passing parade of history.”

That “everything” proves not much. Nowadays any school kid learns that Franklin Roosevelt was in a wheelchair, that Eleanor Roosevelt was a firecracker, that Winston Churchill was extraordinarily eloquent and loved his Scotch, that Harry Truman was a decent human being.

Yet even a dusty history lesson can show us something else. An edgier or more politically charged production might have linked, in sneaky or overt ways, the clueless Herbert Hoover to the current occupant of the White House, or made some commentary on the leap from when a servant’s job at the White House was the best a smart, talented black man could hope for — to the day when a black man has a realistic chance of winning the presidency.

Instead, directed by Gary Yates, the play’s connections are left for the audience to explore at intermission.

In a one-man show, perfect casting is essential. As Fields, Barry Scott has handsome, leading-man looks and a rich baritone speaking voice. Yet Scott is a little slouchy, which doesn’t help animate a man who was surely a sort of robo-servant, precise in every movement, able to stand like a statue then step forward to refill a wine glass in a fluid, uninterrupted gesture. If Fields was an artist among butlers — and his words and confidence suggests he knew he was — then the actor playing Fields should move like an artist.

We’re told that music fires his soul. Scott isn’t a singer, and doesn’t deliver lines with much musicality, so he can’t fully inhabit the role. He can tell us, but can’t make us feel what Alonzo Field’s life must have been like, in all its honor and frustration.





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