Connecting Through Theater (Actor’s Theatre of Louisville)

FDR’s Very Happy Hour

Play by Regan Linton

Directed by M. Graham Smith

Director of Artistic Sign Language Kalen Feeny

Review by Loraine Lawson

Entire contents are copyright @ 2025 by Loraine Lawson. All rights reserved.  

FDR’s Very Happy Hour isn’t just a play: It’s an experience. From the moment audiences walks through the door to the moment they exit, they are emerged in both the play and the interactions between actors, audiences and the process of becoming something more — a community.

The experience begins when you walk through the door, with the cast greeting you with “drink” cards that asks questions such as what is your favorite national park and encouraged you to share the answer with someone. 

As you enter the theater, you’re invited to sit at one of the round tables on the show floor, each decorated with an illuminated bowl filled with glass beads, pens and US flags. You’re invited to get a drink at the bar that is incorporated into the play, right on the stage floor, which only makes sense since it is a happy hour.

Franklin Deleno Roosevelt, played with proper aplomb by Regan Linton, enters the stage smiling and shaking hands, as personable as you’d expect one of the three most popular presidents in history to be. And this play shows FDR as he was seldom presented himself in life: In a wheelchair.

Indeed, part of the point of the play is not just incorporating the broad community of people, but meeting the audience where it is, both physically and emotionally.

“This project prioritizes exploring the creation of an accessible experience for the fullest human spectrum possible,” Actors notes in its show description.

Interpreters expressed the play in sign while a screen provided a transcript in real-time. The set design provided Linton with the ability to easily navigate between tables, shaking hands and greeting audiences with real questions about what we’re proud of, how we would change the world and, ultimately, what complicated truths we hold privately.

In the beginning, President James Madison, played by Alexandria Wailes, presents a Constitution for the evening, or a set of agreements about how the dialogue will work.

“Let us choose decency and grace with each other, remembering we are all a work in progress,” it read. “Let us engage without interference from algorithms.”

Wailes brought depth to the experience with her vivid acting, primarily signing her part. She played three roles: President James Madison, Smokey the Bear, and Eleanor Roosevelt, with just the right demeanor and attitude for each.

It may sound strange to say it, but the scene with Smokey the Bear was particularly powerful. The screen backdrop showed the earth catching fire and becoming torched. Smokey indicates this is because of all the anger and fighting going on today before collapsing in despair. FDR encouraged someone from the audience to give her a hug, providing the audience the chance to feel both culpability and comforting at the same time.

“We don’t only fight and bicker and start fires,” FDR told Smokey. “We can make things better, too.”

Then the audience was asked to join in singing, “This Land is Your Land.”

There was even an excellent special guest from the community, University of Louisville Professor Kaila Adia Story, who FDR brought onto the stage for a brief interview about how she creates change and finds hopes in her students.

But does the immersive experience work? 

It absolutely does. Slowly over the course of the evening — and a number of toasts by FDR — audience members began to talk and listen to one another, even beyond their own tables.

At beginning of the play, we were asked how we felt, at this particular moment in time. Several audience members openly expressed that they felt anxious and worried about the future.

The play does not try to make that disappear, because that is the reality of today’s world, but it does challenge us to rise to the occasion.

After all, this is not the only time people have felt anxious and worried. FDR saw the Great Depression, World War II and endured his own personal struggle with the effects of polio. He was called both a fascist and a Bolshevik in his time, and he hid his need for a wheelchair throughout most of his life — even forbidding the press from taking a picture of it. 

He had moments where he wasn’t so great, too, such as the 9066 resolution, which forced 120,000 into camps because they were of Japanese descent, although most were also U.S. citizens. The play confronts that reality, although it shows FDR struggling to accept this “complicated truth.”

Ultimately, though, FDR’s optimistic work won him four elections. He brought people together to create the Great Society, an expansive national parks system and a Civilian Conservation Core that planted two billion trees across the nation, fighting the erosion that triggered the Dust Bowl.

But by coming together, there is hope and empowerment. By the end of the 90-minute play, the audience feels that truth, daring to ask: What might we build by working together and talking outside the algorithm?

FDR's Very Happy Hour Actors Theatre of Louisville October 15-26 2025 Bingham Theatre Actors Theatre of Louisville, 316 W Main St Louisville KY www.actorstheatre.org