OnStage ‘Wife
Swappers’: Suburbia laid bare
BY STEPHANIEMERRY Long before the Fringe Festival inun- TOM MCGRATH
Second City’s “AGirl's Guide toWashington Politics,” with, from left, LoriMcClain, Rebecca Sohn and Lilli-Anne Brown, opens atWoollyMammoth Theatre onWednesday.
At Second City, girls rule Women in politics get
skewered in comedy troupe’s latest show
BY LAVANYA RAMANATHAN When famed Chicago comedy troupe
Second City brought “Barack Stars” to Washington’s politically wired audiences last year, timing was everything; night after night, the seats atWoollyMammoth Theatre filled with the Who’s Who of Washington, all game for a laugh at themselves and Obamamania. (Even for- mer White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, thoroughly lampooned in the show, stopped by to see it.) Next week, Second City returns to
Woolly with its cross hairs aimed square- ly at this year’s hot subject: the first ladies of politics, from Sarah Palin to Nancy Pelosi (and perhaps even Christine O’Donnell). All get a skewering in “A Girl’s Guide to Washington Politics,” which opensWednesday.
“We started developing it before the
midterm elections,” writer Kate James says, by phone fromChicago. And to keep it as timely as possible, James says, they’ll keep tweaking almost till themoment the actors hit the stage. “With a Washington audience, you
can’t get away without playing to the top of your intelligence,” adds Kelly Leonard, president of Second City, which has been the training ground for some of comedy’s most revered talents, including John Belushi and Tina Fey. “We all want to deliver a smart laugh.” To do that, the writers hinged the
show’s 16 sketches, performed by a cast of five women and one man, not just on candidates and elections, but on the city’s sexual politics — and sexual proclivities. The show’s running joke is “a talking- head type” inspired by such personalities as Suze Orman, Ann Coulter and TV matchmaker Patti Stanger. (The charac- ter, James says, “has this really super strong point of view, and we’re not really sure why.”) Audiences can expect to see a tea party rally, and Leonard and James cautiously reveal, one sketch in which three wives whose husbands have affairs
belt out a tune about the woes of being a Washington wife. (Why do we feel a rendition of “All the Single Ladies” com- ing on?) While “tea party material in Chicago
generally is laughed at,” says Leonard, in other cities, it doesn’t always go over so well. “Someone threw a piece of fruit and stormed out of the theater,” he says. InWashington, however, the company
doesn’t have to worry about episodes like that. It’s “an audience that’s used to material that’s both on the left and the right,” Leonard says. “We’re kind of playing to a home team in Washington even though it’s an away game.”
ramanathanl@washpost.com
A Girl’s Guide toWashington Politics
Wednesday through Jan. 9 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, 641 D St. NW. 202-393-3939 or
www.woollymammoth.net. $30-$75; a pay-what-you-can night is Wednesday.
MV JANTZEN
“Wife Swappers” stars, from left, Tony Greenberg, CatherineAselford, MichaelMiyazaki and Kris Roth.
dated the city with irreverent perfor- mances and Molotov Theatre Group spritzed audiences with fake blood, there was Cherry Red Productions. Washington’s granddaddy of saucy, scandalous theatrics has been responsi- ble for unleashing “Dingleberries,” “Can- nibal Cheerleaders on Crack” and “Poona the [expletive] Dog” on area audiences, yet the group had been conspicuously absent from local stages of late. But now, after a three-year focus on the spooky and scary that included a horror movie and a naughty haunted house, the group is back onthe boards where it all began in 1996— at the D.C. Arts Center — with “Wife Swappers,” which offers up a riotous night in the life ofsomeswinging couples. Consider yourself warned: There will
be naked people, and lots of them. “They canexpect to see everybodypart that they could possibly imagine and inmost varia- tions that they could imagine, as well,” artistic director Ian Allen says, helpfully. But while the sight gags are over the
top (a portly man in a g-string, for example), the vibe onstage is nonchalant, which seems to add an incongruous layer to the comedy. The characters partaking in the evening’s festivities act as if this night of debauchery is a typical suburban potluck. This understated outrageous- ness is something of a trademark for playwright Justin Tanner. “It’s almost Mamet,” says company
on stage continued on 36
35 EZ
the washington post friday, december 3, 2010 l
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