On Monday night, a passel of Hollywood A-listers did the most theater geek thing imaginable: They attempted to fix the problems of America by doing a staged reading of a play.

The movie stars gathered at the Riverside Church in New York to read an adaptation of special counsel Robert Mueller's 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and President Trump's possible obstruction of that investigation, written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Robert Shenkkan. The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts was livestreamed for the world to see. Each act was meant to show an act of obstruction, i.e. Act 1 showed Trump asking the FBI to shut down the investigation into Michael Flynn, Act 2 showed him saying that he fired FBI director James Comey because of Russia.

The reading lasted roughly an hour and left many viewers perplexed. What … was that? But the point seemed to be to try to bring the Mueller report to life, using the talents and charms and fame of Hollywood, so that the public—and perhaps Congress, for whom the report was actually written—might finally take note. It felt like Hollywood's attempt to make up for a different, less animated performance that happened a month ago.

On May 29, America tuned in for what should have been quite a spectacle. The star of the show couldn't have had a more rapt audience hanging on his every word. Robert Mueller, the special counsel, was giving a press conference. This, liberals and #resistancefighters and even centrists thought, was the moment that the man who'd been dogging President Trump for two years would explain the conclusions of his long-awaited report clearly, emphatically, once and for all. He would, they hoped, directly contradict attorney general William Barr's interpretation of the report as clearing the president of all wrongdoing.

Instead, viewers watching TV news or listening to the radio or tuned into the livestream at their desks heard a nervous, almost monotone lawyer speaking in legalese. Mueller's measured talk was no match for the sound bites of Trump's tweets and the flash of Barr's multiple TV appearances. Mueller's strongest statement—"if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so"—was a double negative you needed a degree in semiotics to decipher.

The Investigation was like what would happen if the members of your mom's secret #muellerreport Facebook group all got fabulous new haircuts and then livestreamed their group chat.

With Monday's live reading, Hollywood appeared to be saying if publishing the report as a book and audiobook won't do it, if a press conference from Mueller won't do it, if two years of build up and press coverage won't do, we'll damn well get America to care about this report using the power of the theater! The results were strange.

Kevin Kline played Mueller, and though Kline is an animated and talented actor, he chose to portray the man as subdued and reserved as he actually is, which had the perhaps unintended effect of rendering his words as forgettable as Mueller's press conference performance.

John Lithgow starred as Trump and was satisfyingly angry and animated, though for every great line-read that got your attention he was forced to weirdly read his own stage directions, which was both confusing and brought him out of character. Annette Bening read editorial comments from the playwright in the role of narrator, and that was fine.

The rest of the cast—from Michael Shannon (with a lustrous mane of hair) to Alyssa Milano—played multiple characters, which was often incredibly confusing, even for the actors. At one point Milano missed her cue to come in and read as lawyer Jay Sekulow, and who really could blame her? The "play" hadn't contextualized who Sukelow was, hadn't explained that she was playing him, and had no way—at least in the livestream—for viewers to keep track of who anyone was playing.

The Investigation was like what would happen if the members of your mom's secret #muellerreport Facebook group all got fabulous new haircuts and then livestreamed their group chat.