Review by Bess J.M. Hochstein
Whether the debt-ceiling wrangling in Washington has you gnashing your teeth or near tears, take a deep breath—and prepare to laugh it out. The Capitol Steps have returned to Cranwell Resort for their fifth-consecutive summer residency, and our elected representatives have given them more than enough material to provide you with 90 minutes of laughter therapy, and many more hours of chuckling reminiscence. Just reading the list of songs is enough to raise the corners of your lips before the show even begins. Anyone with any prior knowledge of the Capitol Steps— parodists impersonating political and other public figures, to the tunes of familiar pop and Broadway songs—will have an inkling of what to expect from such titles as Fun Fun Fun til Obama Takes Our Teabags Away, Right Wing Striking, and How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea? But who would want to miss the cast’s lunatic mimicry of, say, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor in the Supreme Justices’ Ladies Room, singing out their passion for “Scalia” to the tune of Maria from West Side Story, or Michele Bachman and Sarah Palin having at each other with Don’t Go Fakin’ You’re Smart, to the classic Elton John/Kiki Dee duet, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. Another unlikely duet has Muammar Khadafi pining to Charlie Sheen: “You Don’t Send Me Twitters.” And, speaking of Twitter, Anthony Weiner’s recent escapades come to the fore several times: first in a genius song about what appeared on one female cast member’s “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Screen,” and then, in the obligatory Lirty Dies, a mind-blowing monologue of jumbled words addressed to the "jades and gentlemen" in the audience that ultimately remind us to be grateful that we get to pick our leaders.
The show remains smartly up-to-date: There’s a side-splitting version of Hello!, the doorbell song from the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon, featuring the full roster of Republican presidential candidates, and a noir-ish detective narrative based on the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal so fresh the actor relied on notes to perform it. And, a little less hot-off-the-headlines, the recent repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell became fodder for fun in The Ballad of The Queen Berets. The Capitol Steps troupe got its start in 1981 as a group of Senate staffers and amateur hams. Today multiple casts perform across the country. Over the years, they have recorded more than 30 CDs and can be heard on NPR’s quarterly Politics Takes a Holiday broadcasts. While several of the company’s current members have had experience on Capitol Hill, most are now performance pros, with serious stage cred, fast-paced comic timing, and, in some cases, remarkable voices. With just a few cheap wigs, simple props and costumes, a cued-in keyboardist, and laugh-out-loud lyrics, the versatile cast of five provides a full summer’s worth of laughter in one evening. In honor of Capitol Steps’ 30th anniversary, audiences this year are treated to a grand finale, We Didn’t Start Satire, a madcap romp from the Reagan presidency to the present, set to Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire—three decades of scandals in three minutes. The state of our Union ensures they’ll have plenty more fodder for years to come. The Capitol Steps at CranwellNow through September 3 Nightly @ 8 p.m. except Tuesday Tickets: $49; call the box office at (413) 881-1636 or purchase online. Current cast (subject to change): Jon Bell Mike Carruthers Felicia Curry Ann Johnson Mike Tifford Marc Irwin, keyboardist
