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An overdose of political irony
'This is the Week That is' by 1812
Dan Rottenberg
In this endless political season, have you had it up to here with posturing politicians whose bombardments of blather distract you from your Phillies games and “Law and Order” re-runs? Just once, wouldn’t you love to see their pomposities popped by a satirical theater troupe like 1812 Productions?
What’s that you say? It isn’t the candidates you’re sick of— it’s Leno, Letterman, O’Brien and all the other late-night satirists poking fun at those poor exhausted candidates?
Therein lies the essential problem with This Is The Week That Is, currently at Plays and Players until Election Day. At a time when many Americans (myself included) eschew the news at 11 for the phony news on “The Daily Show,” this energetic revue’s basic premise— that political parody would provide a desperately needed breath of fresh air right about now— just doesn’t hold water. Indeed, many of the skits in This is the Week are derivative of “The Daily Show,” and they’re rarely as crisp. This is the Week hits its targets often, but they’re such easy targets. Or do you still get your jollies from jokes about McCain’s age, Obama’s slickness or Palin’s vapidity?
Taking on South Philly
Humor works best when it punctures the powerful. When Erasmus, Voltaire and Jonathan Swift (not to mention those Danish cartoonists who caricatured Muhammad) lampooned religious orthodoxy, they put their lives at risk. But the gutsiest segment in this show (in terms of risking broken knees) was a good-natured parody of South Philadelphia in which the versatile Jennifer Childs portrayed “Patsy from Fifth and Shunk,” who proffers opinions about the state of the world from her front stoop even though she’s never ventured north of Washington Avenue.
Only a few of the skits were sufficiently inspired to make me laugh out loud. In one, James Madison and John Jay contemplate including gay marriage in the Bill of Rights— when the term “gay” meant something very different than it does today. An interspersed series of video interviews allows presidents who died in office (Lincoln, FDR, William Henry Harrison, all manically portrayed by Tony Brathwaite) to engage in the sort of petty recriminations and score settling that other ex-presidents indulge in on talk shows and memoirs today. (Harrison, interviewed in a bowling alley, scolds the media for overlooking the achievements of his 30-day administration, such as the nation’s longest inaugural address, and complains that his name was omitted from his euphonic campaign slogan— “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”) In a spoof of news broadcasts, Childs and Steven Wright acknowledge that racial and gender stereotypes are actually valid and proceed to prove the point— he by whipping out a bottle of wine in a paper bag and talking jive, she by breaking down in an emotional PMS hot flash.
Sympathy for Bob Dole
1812 is a sophisticated and versatile troupe— its Suburban Love Songs was damn near brilliant, and it’s fun to see Jennifer Childs transform herself from a South Philly stoop-sitter to the Alaskan beauty queen Sarah Palin. And who knew that Anthony Lawton, so devastating in Of Mice and Men at the Walnut and The Great Divorce at the Lantern, could also be very funny?
But ridiculing presidential candidates is like shooting fish in a barrel. Ridiculing losing presidential candidates— like Kerry, Dole and Dukakis, not to mention John Quincy Adams— is only slightly more amusing than making jokes about retarded children. After more than two hours of this treatment, I found myself, for the first time in my long and grizzled journalistic career, feeling empathy for those benighted souls who presume to seek national public office. If we've forgiven the erstwhile Chicago Weatherman Bill Ayers, can we find no place in our hearts for poor old Martin Van Buren, whose worst sin was that he looked funny?
If you want a few good laughs, the first act of This Is The Week That Is should suffice. Leave at intermission and you’ll be home in time to catch “The Daily Show,” with its timeless theatrical message: Less is more.
What’s that you say? It isn’t the candidates you’re sick of— it’s Leno, Letterman, O’Brien and all the other late-night satirists poking fun at those poor exhausted candidates?
Therein lies the essential problem with This Is The Week That Is, currently at Plays and Players until Election Day. At a time when many Americans (myself included) eschew the news at 11 for the phony news on “The Daily Show,” this energetic revue’s basic premise— that political parody would provide a desperately needed breath of fresh air right about now— just doesn’t hold water. Indeed, many of the skits in This is the Week are derivative of “The Daily Show,” and they’re rarely as crisp. This is the Week hits its targets often, but they’re such easy targets. Or do you still get your jollies from jokes about McCain’s age, Obama’s slickness or Palin’s vapidity?
Taking on South Philly
Humor works best when it punctures the powerful. When Erasmus, Voltaire and Jonathan Swift (not to mention those Danish cartoonists who caricatured Muhammad) lampooned religious orthodoxy, they put their lives at risk. But the gutsiest segment in this show (in terms of risking broken knees) was a good-natured parody of South Philadelphia in which the versatile Jennifer Childs portrayed “Patsy from Fifth and Shunk,” who proffers opinions about the state of the world from her front stoop even though she’s never ventured north of Washington Avenue.
Only a few of the skits were sufficiently inspired to make me laugh out loud. In one, James Madison and John Jay contemplate including gay marriage in the Bill of Rights— when the term “gay” meant something very different than it does today. An interspersed series of video interviews allows presidents who died in office (Lincoln, FDR, William Henry Harrison, all manically portrayed by Tony Brathwaite) to engage in the sort of petty recriminations and score settling that other ex-presidents indulge in on talk shows and memoirs today. (Harrison, interviewed in a bowling alley, scolds the media for overlooking the achievements of his 30-day administration, such as the nation’s longest inaugural address, and complains that his name was omitted from his euphonic campaign slogan— “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”) In a spoof of news broadcasts, Childs and Steven Wright acknowledge that racial and gender stereotypes are actually valid and proceed to prove the point— he by whipping out a bottle of wine in a paper bag and talking jive, she by breaking down in an emotional PMS hot flash.
Sympathy for Bob Dole
1812 is a sophisticated and versatile troupe— its Suburban Love Songs was damn near brilliant, and it’s fun to see Jennifer Childs transform herself from a South Philly stoop-sitter to the Alaskan beauty queen Sarah Palin. And who knew that Anthony Lawton, so devastating in Of Mice and Men at the Walnut and The Great Divorce at the Lantern, could also be very funny?
But ridiculing presidential candidates is like shooting fish in a barrel. Ridiculing losing presidential candidates— like Kerry, Dole and Dukakis, not to mention John Quincy Adams— is only slightly more amusing than making jokes about retarded children. After more than two hours of this treatment, I found myself, for the first time in my long and grizzled journalistic career, feeling empathy for those benighted souls who presume to seek national public office. If we've forgiven the erstwhile Chicago Weatherman Bill Ayers, can we find no place in our hearts for poor old Martin Van Buren, whose worst sin was that he looked funny?
If you want a few good laughs, the first act of This Is The Week That Is should suffice. Leave at intermission and you’ll be home in time to catch “The Daily Show,” with its timeless theatrical message: Less is more.
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