“Daisy” a Timely Document of the Advertising Shot Heard ‘Round the Political World

If you don’t know The Beatles, you cannot possibly understand the genesis of rock ‘n’ roll. But in both politics and advertising, the “Daisy” spot is even more seminal, more original. Sean Devine’s Daisy, which makes its California premiere online in International City Theatre’s first COVID-era production, dramatizes the creation of the 60-second spot that revolutionized political campaigning and whose reverberations still move us today.

Aaron, Sid, and Louise (Matthew Floyd Miller, Alex Dabestani, and Erin Anne Williams, respectively) are star ad execs at Doyle Dane Bernbach, which has just been hired by the White House to create an ad campaign for Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 presidential run. Although television may have been a big part of the prior three races, LBJ’s election committee wants something new, something more aggressive — especially once the Republicans nominate extremist Barry Goldwater, who has publicly professed his willingness to use atomic weapons in Vietnam and elsewhere.

Enter Tony Schwartz (David Nevell), an agoraphobic sound designer who’s ahead of his time. He knows that combining the right sonic elements in the right way can “bring to the surface what’s already deep inside,” just as Louise knows a killer ad idea when she hears it — in this case, the juxtaposition of a little girl counting flower petals, followed by an ominous countdown preceding a nuclear explosion. 

Despite never mentioning Goldwater’s name, from the moment of its one and only TV broadcast on September 7, 1964, the “Daisy” spot was considered the first attack ad, and Daisy is a meditation on the Pandora’s box it opened, with characters taking turns questioning and justifying their actions in language that at times is a bit too on-the-nose. “Tell me, where is the ethics in attack ads?” “Tell me that when Cliff [an LBJ adviser played by Phillip J. Lewis] was talking about attack ads that didn’t feel like a slippery slope.” “What we do is going to play on 8 million televisions across the country. Not only is the opportunity unprecedented, but so is the responsibility.”

By design, Daisy is a play without either a moral center or a bad guy. All of the characters are ambitious, but none is amoral. All have blind spots, yet all have some idea what they’re doing. Devine deserves credit for this, just as he does for not trying to provide answers for the unanswerable. “The best we can do,” says Schwartz, “is make choices for an imperfect world.”

As an online production, although Daisy is a decent first stab for ICT— and you definitely feel like you’re watching a real play and not simply a video exercise masquerading as such — it’s a bit puzzling why it isn’t a bit better. Although this is an archived live performance, it contains no less than mid-scene five edits, three or four of which are noticeable glitches. And that doesn’t include a particular line flub so obviously wrong in a nontrivial way that there’s no excuse for leaving it as-is since they’re doing edits, anyway. 

Perhaps a tougher nut to crack is the stasis. Because Devine’s script is innately static, this was going to be a shortcoming even were ICT staging this in their usual Beverly O’Neill Theater digs, and so the problem of having actors isolated from each other in their own rectangular boxes doesn’t hurt as much as it might for a script with more physical action and interaction. Still, it doesn’t seem like director caryn desai has quite yet figured out how to turn the limitations of virtual theatre into inspirations. (I’m not saying I do, either, but I’ll know it when I see it.)

What cannot be denied is that Daisy is a timely choice for our current election season, where the Republican in the race ain’t got nothing on Goldwater, and the cerebral sophistication of the “Daisy” spot is a far cry from today’s political milieu and the attacks that even relatively sober candidates routinely unleash on each other. So if you feel like ruminating on the road that got us here, Daisy is not a bad place to start.

Daisy at International City Theatre (virtually)

Times: On demand
The show runs through Nov. 7
Cost: $20
Details: (562) 436-4610, ICTLongBeach.org

Learn More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJiYY2-xibU