Slap-Happy Days Are Here Again

One day, 10 years ago, Chief Justice Rehnquist turned up at the Supreme Court with gold rings on his sleeves. Reporters, flummoxed, demanded to know what business the chief justice had with gold rings on his sleeves. Justice Rehnquist had seen a local production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Iolanthe,” they were told, and elected to adopt part of the Lord Chancellor’s costume. No particular reason; he just liked the look.The thought that crossed my mind at the time – it’s delightful to see real life exceed the farthest reaches of parody – returned this weekend. In a theater decked with patriotic bunting, Paper Mill Playhouse has revived “Of Thee I Sing.” When it works, and when it doesn’t, this musical satire is a testament to the streak of adorable foolishness in our politics.The show, like the chief justice’s sartorial breakthrough, has one foot in G &S and one in slapstick. The former can be found mostly in the songs, by George and Ira Gershwin. A bunch of party hacks fret that their candidate, John P. Wintergreen, won’t be elected. The people don’t trust him. They decide he’ll run on the foolproof platform of love, staging a beauty contest in Atlantic City, with the winner to become first lady. This gives Ira Gershwin plenty of opportunities for Gilbertian riffs. “If a girl is sexy / She may be Mrs. Prexy!” sing the contestants. The company later enthuses, “Posterity is just around the corner!”The libretto translates G &S topsyturvydom into American vernacular. George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind were masters of calculated lunacy, kings of wisecracks. They had both written for the Marx Brothers by the time they concocted the idea for this show in 1931, and it shows.Wintergreen throws the contest winner overboard in favor of demure secretary Mary Turner, and her delectable corn muffins. (She bakes them without corn.) The lovers re-enact their wedding proposal at campaign rallies in all 48 states. A fake newsreel shows photos of them as the election results come in. In Hollywood, Wintergreen edges out Mickey Mouse. In Kentucky, he beats Light Wines and Beer, but loses to Straight Whiskey.Seven decades later, some of the comedy no longer works. The comic punch of a scene depicting daily life in the White House – he deals with affairs of state, she negotiates with the butcher – depends on the novelty of seeing the Oval Office as no different than a kitchen in Newark. In 2004, when the president’s dog gets his own absurd campaign video, the laughs dry up.According to custom, I am now supposed to abjure the show for its “datedness.” But what does that mean? “Of Thee I Sing” was thrillingly topical in 1931, when it became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize. It’s not a moral failure on the playwrights’ part that they wrote a show satirizing the times, and then the times changed. We don’t blame coffee for getting cold.It’s a mark of the show’s foresight, or the timeless folly of politicians, that a lot of the comedy has a way of renewing itself. Five years ago, the most relevant moments concerned the jilted contest winner, a vixen of dubious French heritage named Diana Devereaux. The president’s broken promise sullies his reputation, and leads to an impeachment proceeding: very Kenneth Starr.The timeliest parts now are the meddlesome French ambassador who hamstrings the president’s actions, and the party hacks’ campaign strategy. “We appeal to your hearts, not your intelligence,” says one; today it would be spleens. The candidate only wants to talk about one part of the party’s record and ignore the rest. Lately we’ve been getting that approach in stereo.Even acknowledging that the show can’t have the impact it had 73 years ago, there’s enough promising material here to hope for a satisfying night of satire. History, again, sets a high bar: The original production was staged by Kaufman himself, a director without rival when it comes to finding and maximizing laughs. Tina Landau doesn’t have quite the same success here.A lot of these scenes want breakneck pacing. The best performances, like Adam Grupper’s conniving campaigner and Fred Berman’s ambassadeur furieux, have the broad, confident style that the overall staging lacks. Ron Bohmer has a politician’s veneer, but can’t negotiate all the twists of Wintergreen’s duplicity and romance. Attired like Oliver Hardy, Wally Dunn is a funny, doughy Vice-President Alexander Throttlebottom.The show’s real star may be choreographer Joey Pizzi. The dances have just the right mix of giddiness and flash: They convey the madcap spirit, and hint of sentiment, in a play that combines a presidential inauguration with a wedding ceremony, and hinges on the question, “Which is more important – corn muffins or justice?” I don’t need to tell you which one the chief justice chooses. If his impressionable reallife counterpart catches the show, fear for our jurisprudence.***The week’s politico-theatrical news is not limited to Millburn, N.J. On Friday, David Hare’s hotly anticipated play about the Iraq war opened in London. “Stuff Happens,” featuring Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, Powell, and the rest, has been assembled from the public record and Mr. Hare’s imagination. (The title is derived from Donald Rumsfeld’s blithe response to a question about looting in Baghdad.)Though critical reaction has been favorable, a theater spokesperson says it’s too soon to know if the show will transfer to America. For now, let’s be content to admire the British theatrical culture. Not only has a leading playwright written something so vast, topical, and potentially controversial, he has found a home for it on the nation’s most prominent stage, the Royal National Theatre’s Olivier. It’s a credit to artistic director Nicholas Hytner, and not just to him.Of course, New York is not completely without such fare. Last week I mentioned that the Naked Angels and the Culture Project were teaming up for “Democracy,” short programs of plays and songs about our political system, with guest speakers doing a talk-back afterwards. The series opened last night, and wastes no time in unveiling a major draw: Tonight’s post-show speaker is Kurt Vonnegut.

Slap-Happy Days Are Here Again

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