"Red Hot Patriot': Kathleen Turner as Molly Ivins (3rd review)

I have visited Texas, I have friends in Texas, I have even published in The Texas Review. I don't believe in sweeping generalizations (however often I succumb to them), and I would no more hold all Texans responsible for George W. Bush than I would all Austrians responsible for Hitler.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that we Americans made a considerable mistake when we annexed the Lone Star Republic. We wouldn't be responsible for judges who sleep with prosecutors in capital trials, or for the judge who refused to keep her office open past 5 p.m. in a last-minute capital appeal, presumably because she had a barbecue on the grill. (The prisoner was executed.) We wouldn't be responsible for Dan Rather or Roger Clemens.

On the other hand, Texas did give us Molly Ivins, who made the world safe for Maureen Dowd. Molly was a strapping six-footer and no belle. She had a Daddy thing, and she wanted to drink and report with the big boys. She did, too, and carved a place for women in modern American journalism.

She was also a liberal, which in Texas is like being a polar bear in Australia.

Turner's empathy

Kathleen Turner, who gave the '80s' sexiest screen performance in Body Heat, is now of an age where the traveling one-woman show is a better fit, and Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins is a vehicle tailor-made for her. Turner can't quite get her husky voice into Molly's twang, but it's a serviceable enough approximation. There's a bit of the star turn in her performance, too, but she projects a genuine empathy for Molly, and delivers the numerous one-liners that punctuate the script with deadpan looks and seasoned timing.

In short, despite what seemed a shaky beginning and an occasional run-up on her lines, Turner knows how to hold a stage. Credit a Philadelphia audience, too, that gave one of its biggest laughs of the night to a joke whose punch line was Alexis de Tocqueville. We're no hicks up here.

Molly Ivins was very funny and very liberal— qualities that rarely go together, although no liberal survives long in Texas without a sense of humor. She fought the blues with liquor, never found true love, and died too young. She loved Texas as only the bitterest of critics can love their native soil. In other words, she was a quintessential American figure.

A lingering question

"Red hot patriot" is an inapt description of Ivins, though, and "kick-ass wit" is a publicist's line, not a playwright's. The script (by the sisters Margaret and Allison Engel) never does settle on a consistent approach; at times, it's Mark Twain Tonight, at times a flickering autobiography, at times an anthology of obscure Texas scandals and personalities. Despite Turner's forceful realization, one is left at the end still wondering a bit who Molly Ivins was.

John Arnone's simple but evocative set is a strong point of this production, with stacked metal office chairs and desks suggesting a now bygone era of journalism, as well as the specter of Ivins's own mortality. Russell H. Champa's lighting design and Maya Ciarrocchi's projections are beautifully integrated with it.

Overbearing scenarists can ruin a production. These designers serve their show, producing effects that, handsome in themselves, sensitively enhance stage values.

As for Molly, she's missed— but then, so is journalism, too.♦


To read another review by Dan Rottenberg, click here.
To read another review by Jonathan M. Stein, click here.