Posted on 01/30/2006 5:09:52 PM PST by Roscoe Karns
NEW YORK - It's not hard to spot the common theme in three New York theater offerings this season that go by the titles "Bush is Bad," "Bush Wars: Musical Revenge" and "Laughing Liberally."
The Web site for "Bush is Bad," which is subtitled "The musical cure for the blue-state blues," features a grand piano falling on the head of President George W. Bush.
"Bush Wars" promises what it calls a counterattack on "the disgraceful agenda of the Bush administration." It features a dance number with Bush and Osama bin Laden taking their mothers to lunch at the same restaurant, and another with New Orleans residents singing as they await help after Hurricane Katrina, in a dig at the Bush administration's slow response.
There is also a spoof romantic duet between Bush and his chief adviser Karl Rove, and a naughty bedroom scene which has Vice President Dick Cheney literally in bed with a pair of scantily-clad women named after oil companies.
Both have been attracting enthusiastic audiences to small venues in Manhattan but in a city renowned for its liberal ways the shows may be preaching to the choir.
The organizers of "Laughing Liberally," a one-off evening of stand-up comedy at the 1,500-seat Town Hall on February 4, say their show has broader ambitions.
"It's not going to be an evening of Bush-bashing because that's very easy to do. Hopefully there will be some actual ideas in it," said Jim David, one of the more established comics on the bill with 19 years in the business.
The comedy night is an extension of a drinking club founded by political campaigner Justin Krebs who now boasts 130 chapters of "Drinking Liberally" in 41 states and Washington, D.C., under the slogan "Promoting democracy one pint at a time."
Krebs' father, Eric, a theater producer who is planning an off-Broadway run and a national tour for "Laughing Liberally," said his motto was "Saving democracy one laugh at a time."
He said the initiative was aimed at countering the likes of Rush Limbaugh, whose brand of conservative humor and anti-liberal commentary is hugely successful.
He was also inspired by "The Blue Collar Comedy Tour," a group of comedians who poke fun at Middle America from the inside, in an act that became a movie and a popular television show, and who are most famous for a series of jokes called "10 Ways to Tell You're a Redneck."
"It's enormous all over America, particularly in the south, but not exclusively so," Eric Krebs said of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. "My sense of 'Laughing Liberally' was to create the equivalent from a smart, liberal political point of view."
David, who described himself as a moderate rather than a liberal, said he was looking forward to playing to an audience likely to have read the newspaper, unlike some who come to his regular gigs at comedy clubs from New York to Las Vegas.
He said Bush had polarized the country since his election in 2000, but it was time for moderates to make a comeback.
"I used to get booed (in Las Vegas) two or three years ago when I made a George Bush joke. Now they laugh and nobody boos because things have changed," David said.
But he lamented the complexity of current political scandals, noting that it was much easier for comedians to take a shot at Bill Clinton for his Oval Office dalliances.
"A true thing in comedy is you can have the greatest political joke in the world and people are going to laugh if they get it, but if you have a good sex joke the laugh is going to be twice as big," he said.
Libbies generally don't have much of a sense of humor, at least it doesn't last too long before they become extremely pissed.
On the other hand risk taking is dead in the artist community, so they'll take the mundane route an bash Bush.
Yawn.
Ahh... it's so refreshing to continue seeing the self-proclaimed "[Island] City at the Center of the World" continue to marginalize itself into irrelevancy.
Let them have their petty guffaws.
... oh, and the self-congratulatory fawning and complete condescension towards your audience always helps to promote the show, too. Keep it up!
The left is imploding before our very eyes. It's quite an impressive sight! ;)
These artsy fartsy types, are idiots. Nothing more to be said.
Theater written by trustafarians and performed by waiters.
Yeah, they take shots at Rush Limbaugh every night in a theater seating 1,500. Meanwhile, Rush is handing them their heads every day to an audience of 20 million. I can live with those numbers.
Theater has become a circus, clowns and all.
Nor good taste.
LOL! Great summation. "Trustafarians" - I love it!
Absolutely! Look at all the failed attempts the liberals have made trying to outdo Rush. I'm saying "file that under ain't gonna happen"!
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Not every night...it's a one-night affair (in five days) and as of now it is not close to being sold out. There are very few off-broadway venues that seat more than fifty. I've seen tons of experimental crap (checking out the actors) in 'theaters' that sat no more than thirty.
Hope the libs got a good belly laugh when Crazy Teddy and Hanoi John's filabuster went bust today---watching the Swimmer stutter and stammer, then turn red when he realizes that the so-called 'Dumb' cowboy from Texas schooled his a$$ on politics once again always cracks me up. Maybe Teddy can get a sledge hammer and bust up some watermelons at the next RAT convention--that'd be a hoot!
I wonder if any of the shows have any decent music? Last December 31, a friend had an extra ticket to "Wal-Martopia". The script was pretty much the expected union-promoted anti-Wal-Mart tripe, but the music was actually pretty decent. Too bad the composer's efforts were spent on a show with a single-mom worker who wines about having to work on Christmas (something the real Wal-Mart doesn't require of its workers).
I hear you. When I lived in NYC, I used to go to the theater sometimes four or five nights a week, which means a fair share of off-offs with production budgets of under $100. Although I, as apparently you also, love live theater, I got to where I had to carefully review everything to at least stay away from the most egregious leftist/homosexual propaganda pieces. The percentage of those keeps rising, but you can still find plenty of good stuff that avoids or at least minimizes the predictable lectures.
Exactly. It got to the point where we had no qualms about standing up and walking out in the middle of the first act when the agenda overpowered the entertainment. It's a powerful statement when the only way out is to pass within inches of the stage.
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