A LETTER TO LYNDON B. JOHNSON OR GOD: WHOEVER READS THIS FIRST
Written and Performed by Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland
Soho Playhouse | 15 Vandam Street, NYC
June 4 - June 29
Photos by Morgan Mcdowell
Ah, the beguiling magic of the fringe! Here, amidst the skeletal minimalism of black-box spaces and the stubborn absence of elaborate set design, there occasionally erupts that rare alchemy whereby performers, armed with little more than their bodies and voices, conjure entire worlds before our very eyes. Such is the case with the delightfully anarchic, genre-defying clown duo Xhloe and Natasha in their latest two-hander, A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First, a piece so brimming with theatrical mischief and nostalgic Americana that one feels less an audience member and more a willing time-traveler.
From the moment the lights rise, we are transported—no, catapulted—into the United States of the 1960s, that chaotic and culturally combustible era presided over by the square-jawed figure of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Yet this is no drab civics lesson. Rather, the show vibrates with the wild, wide-eyed energy of Beatlemania, blending it seamlessly with the Huck Finn-ish wonder of Tom Sawyer-style outdoor escapades. It’s a hallucinatory swirl of pop politics and riverbank adventures, evoked not with props or backdrops, but with a manic physicality and a chameleonic command of tone that recalls the golden age of silent cinema and the punk heart of modern clowning. In short, despite the threadbare trappings, this is theatre that traverses continents and decades on the sheer force of performance alone.
In this evocative and richly textured production, the duo inhabit the roles of mud-splattered boy scouts - Ace (Natasha Roland) and Grasshopper (Xhloe Rice) - with a scrappy authenticity that borders on the mythic. Set against the ambient murmur of summer insects and framed by the spartan presence of a single weathered tire, the stage becomes a playground of memory, bravado, and burgeoning identity.
What begins as a seemingly carefree recounting of childhood misadventures - swings from ropes, elaborate dares, coded allegiances, and imagined wartime heroics - soon reveals itself as something deeper and more poignant. The boys’ conversation is currency traded in the language of loyalty and toughness, each boast and challenge underscored by the desperate urgency of youth trying to make sense of itself. The specter of Lyndon B. Johnson’s motorcade rolling through their anonymous town looms like a symbol of adult authority and distant consequence, lending historical gravity to their provincial theatre of war.
One cannot help but be struck by the symbolic gravity with which the boys cling to President Lyndon Baines Johnson—a towering paternal specter who looms over the narrative like a monument of uneasy reassurance. Much as the American populace turned to LBJ in the wake of President Kennedy’s tragic and untimely assassination—a seismic moment that shattered the nation’s innocence and thrust it headlong into a darker, more cynical epoch—the boys, lost in their own private tumults, seek in him a stabilizing presence. He is not merely a politician to them, but a kind of surrogate patriarch, a bulwark against the encroaching chaos of their world.
Indeed, the Vietnam War casts its long, bloodied shadow across the piece, serving as both literal and metaphorical backdrop—its dread and disillusionment seeping into the boys’ consciousness like an unwelcome fog. In a world where their own fathers are either physically absent or emotionally inaccessible, LBJ becomes a curious hybrid: both myth and man, flawed but vital, intimidating yet indispensable.
As for the divine, the boys are notably reticent in their discussions of God. But when the divine does emerge in the margins of their dialogue, it is with a severity that borders on the Old Testament: austere, unyielding, fearsome. There is no comforting deity here, no gentle shepherd: rather what we glimpse is a distant, inscrutable force more to be obeyed or feared than understood or loved.
In sum, the piece is a poignant meditation on authority and dependency, on the desperate need for guidance in an era when every pillar seems to tremble. It is a work that understands, keenly and without sentimentality, that in times of upheaval, be they political or personal, we reach out not for heroes, but for anchors.
Ah, but here we find ourselves in the beguiling clutches of a most curious theatrical juxtaposition—a raucous, knockabout comedy deftly interlaced with the sinewy threads of fable and coming-of-age mythos. The duo, those infectiously likable performers, navigate this tonal high-wire act with remarkable agility, their chemistry effervescent, their timing almost uncannily attuned. What might, in lesser hands, teeter into chaos, here becomes a delicately orchestrated interplay between the boisterously comic and the mythopoetically profound.
At the heart of their offering lies a fable - strange, evocative, and curiously stirring - of a boy yearning to transcend the boundaries of his youth, embarking upon an odyssey of almost folkloric menace to a lake swimming with leeches, where, in a line as arresting as it is surreal, “even the fish held their breath.” Such moments glimmer like shards of broken mirror amidst the roughhousing - eerily beautiful, and rich with subterranean meaning.
The in-the-round staging proves a shrewd and fruitful choice, allowing the performers’ physical exuberance to unfurl in every direction, enveloping the audience in their mischief, their melancholy, their magic. The space breathes with them, inviting an almost conspiratorial intimacy.
And there is the language! Here the wordplay rises to a level one might dare call rich, not merely in pun or jest, but in the darker poetry that emerges as Ace’s bravado begins to crack. As his confidence wanes, so too does the certainty of speech; familiar prayers and declarations are twisted into uncanny refrains, the most striking of which, “Give us this day our daily dead,” lands with the weight of a psalm warped by trauma. Such linguistic slippages are not just clever, they are characterological, revealing the tremors beneath the performance, the ache beneath the grin. In short, what begins as a jester’s romp deepens into something far more resonant: A tale of transformation cloaked in slapstick, a boy’s myth refracted through adult disillusion. It is a comedy with teeth, a parable with pratfalls, utterly engaging, frequently profound, and richly deserving of its audience’s breathless attention.
A veritable kaleidoscope of tone and texture, it begins with a jubilant sonic tapestry woven from the classic rhythms of the Beatles. “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” captures the buoyant, bounding energy of the two boys at its heart. One cannot help but be charmed as these pop anthems, far from nostalgic garnish, become narrative ligatures, threading emotional nuance through scenes of camaraderie and conflict. “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” in particular, emerges not as a saccharine love song, but as a complex emotional confession underlined with ironic protestations that such contact is reserved only for the direst of circumstances.
The show itself is lean in structure, yes, but oh, how it stretches…broad in emotional resonance, breezy in its comedic stylings, yet capable of pivoting with disarming speed into moments of genuine disquiet. It evokes, with unsettling precision, the aura of a bygone era, while refusing to be shackled by nostalgia, instead reflecting our present back to us with a sly and knowing glint. And anchoring it all? The two leads, like seasoned boy scouts tying an elaborate and unshakable knot, bind this mercurial piece together with a deftness that is as confident as it is invisible. Their chemistry is instinctive, their rhythm unspoken. One walks away not only entertained, but curiously moved, as if having witnessed a tightrope act dance mid-air with nothing but mutual trust and the melodies of Lennon and McCartney to steady the line.
Lighting Designer and Technical Manager is Angelo Sagnelli.
Click HERE for tickets.
Review by Tony Marinelli.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on June 25, 2025. All rights reserved.