"Red Hot Patriot': Kathleen Turner as Molly Ivins (1st review)

The spunky Texas journalist Molly Ivins was a walking testament to the power of the pen. Like Mike Royko in the Daley machine's Chicago and Harry Golden (who published the Carolina Israelite in Bible-Belt North Carolina), she spoke truth to power far away from the protective cover of the national spotlight; and also like Royko and Golden, her effectiveness derived not only from her courage and idealism but above all from the gleeful wit with which she skewered the rich and pompous.

Ivins astutely perceived that tycoons and politicians don't mind criticism nearly as much as they mind ridicule. She also instinctively understood that newspaper readers, especially outside the D.C. beltway, would rather be entertained than lectured. Most lefties in Texas might cringe at the prospect of being "an anti-war liberal in oil country," as Ivins put it; but to a columnist up against daily deadlines, the swaggering right-wing bubbas and bozos she chronicled were manna from heaven: "Can you believe God gave me all this material for free?" she asks in Red-Hot Patriot, the new one-woman play based on her career.

Instead of shrinking ladylike into the shadows of Texas macho culture, Ivins celebrated "the sheer joy of a good fight," drinking, smoking and swearing with the worst males of the species. In the process she single-handedly seized the media spotlight from her perceived enemies. By the time she died of breast cancer in 2007, at the age of 62, Ivins was more famous than most of the good-old-boy politicians she wrote about, with a column syndicated in more than 300 newspapers and paperback collections that regularly made the best-seller lists.

Bush reduced to "'shrub'

Here, then, is an original and appropriate dramatic subject. It's especially delicious that Ivins is portrayed by the energetic and ballsy Kathleen Turner, who's even more famous than Ivins. Her story is well served by the projection of images of people and places as she discusses them.

And God knows that Ivins, uninhibited columnist that she was, has provided the playwrights (the twin sisters Margaret and Allison Engel) with an ample supply of quips. Thus editors are "mice training to be rats"; alcohol "may lead nowhere, but it sure is the scenic route"; George W. Bush— "shrub" to Ivins— "provided endless material— he also provided thousands of graves."

It's also useful that Red Hot Patriot has opened not in intimidating Texas but in reticent Quaker Philadelphia— a community that, whatever its other failings, may well be the most tolerant place on Earth in respect to free speech. The unfettered expression that we Philadelphians take for granted is envied in other parts of the world— and not just in Iran or China, as Red Hot Patriot reminds us.

On the other hand, Ivins's rhetorical skewering of the Texas establishment works best when her targets are familiar to us, like the Bushes and Governor Ann Richards; but too often in Red Hot Patriot they're provincial Lone Star buffoons whose comeuppance will be lost on Easterners.

The limits of wit

A larger problem with Red Hot Patriot lies in the two-dimensional nature of journalism, as opposed to drama or literature. The material for this play, like the material for Ivins's books, is drawn from her abundant witty newspaper columns. But wit is the salt of talk, not the food. Like most columnists, Ivins adopted a posture— the spunky ass-kicker— that served the needs of her audience and her publishers. Introspection, doubt and subtle nuance were not her things, at least for public consumption.

So we are left with little sense of what made Ivins tick, aside from some wholesale Freudian speculation that her columns are "mostly back talk I wish I'd said to my father," a domineering conservative oilman known as "The General." And Kathleen Turner is left with what's essentially a one-note performance.

We're also left with little sense of this journalist's impact. Yes, Ivins comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable, but specifically how did her work change the landscape, in Texas or in America? "My legacy," the stage Ivins remarks in her only stab at the question, "will be to support those folks who were pains in the ass to those in power." Too bad Ivins didn't live to witness the rise of the Tea Parties. Pains in the ass can be just as stupid as the fat cats on top.

No matter— I found Red Hot Patriot an inspiring piece of theater. But then, like Ivins, I too labored for years in the once-despised nether reaches of alternative journalism. (Ivins actually once quoted me in one of her books.) For folks like me, 80 minutes in this remarkable woman's company is an uplifting and entertaining reminder to keep the faith. Of course, to a Shrub, that message might translate as "Stay the course."♦


To read another review by Jonathan M. Stein, click here.
To read another review by Robert Zaller, click here.
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