Laura's Bush

by Toby Zinman

theater review

"Opening nationwide" usually refers to movies, but in a rare (maybe unprecedented) event, in cities all over the country (from New York to San Francisco, from Seattle to Atlanta), in this month before the presidential election, Jane Martin’s new play, Laura’s Bush, is having its premiere. And it’s free -- no rights, no royalties. Think of it as a campaign contribution. It is unlikely that anybody’s mind will be changed by this show (what Republican would come to a play with this title?), but it might make some of us vote with even more vigor. (I had the bizarre experience of coming home from the theater to catch the end of the third debate, just as W. was telling the nation how he fell in love with Laura at a backyard barbecue.)

The evening begins with a warmup playlet: "Grand Dames" features a pair of elegant chairs and two women having not tea but oil, served by a seething ex-sheik (Steven Wright). Mrs. Baliburton (Mike Dees) is being entertained by Mrs. Chaliburton (the excellent Brian McCann), and for their diversion Mrs. Chaliburton has "laid on a poisoning" to provide a lesson "amidst a stormy sea of godless humanism."

Laura’s Bush is billed as "a satirical satyr play," and it delivers: a lewdly funny, shrewd indictment of the neo-con conspiracy in Washington. With a clever script, some excellent actors and an imaginative shoestring production directed by Andrew Merkel, Azuka makes theater out of a couple of red suits and a few plastic stools.

The preposterous premise is that a mousy crypto-lesbian librarian (Tina Brock) has, on 41 occasions on national television, read Laura Bush’s eye blinks as a Morse code cry for help. She enlists the help of a local hooker, "an aging slut in deepest Kansas" (Amanda Schoonover is a wonder in this underwritten role), to rescue the First Lady (Kaleo Bird, superb at getting the tone just right, dimples, pearls and all). Steven Wright reappears in an uncanny imitation of Clinton and a terrifying imitation of Rumsfeld.

Jane Martin is the mystery playwright: For decades, her work (Anton in Showbiz, Talking With, Keely and Du) has won prize after prize, but nobody has ever seen her, photographed her, or interviewed her. Jon Jory, former artistic director of The Actor’s Theatre in Louisville, Ky., has been her spokesman, and it is widely assumed that Jane Martin is his pseudonym.

LAURA’S BUSH

Through Oct. 29, Azuka Theatre Collective at The Playground at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St., 215-733-0255.

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