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For "most improbable summer entertainment package", it'd be hard to top the offbeat comic gem being presented by Steve Ritchey, the enterprising Artistic Director of the Mapleleaf Theatre. In the leafy grove of Lake County's Harpersfield Vineyard, relaxed suburban couples at plastic patio tables are drinking wine, munching on foccaccia bread, and laughing their heads off at an al fresco production of..."Rush Limbaugh in Night School"?!
The success of this cheerfully daft comedy, which won an American Theatre Critics Association Award, is proof positive of the adage that most theatre producers seriously underestimate a "mainstream" audience's willingness to take risks. In Charlie Varon's witty, literate shaggy dog story, the right-wing radio celebrity dons a false goatee, attends a Spanish class at the New School in New York's Greenwich Village, and promptly falls in love with the only person in the class who has never heard of him -- a chubby feminist in a Ben and Jerry's T-shirt, who is really an incognito Weather Underground heiress on the lam from the FBI since the '60's.
Even though Varon's shrewd comedy is full of topical satire and cultural in-jokes -- Limbaugh has the lead in a star-studded experimental "Othello" in Central Park directed by motormouth monologist Spalding Gray, and fulminates about naked performance artist "Homo Ludens" -- the story is accessible and touching. More than simply "love conquers all", it celebrates our American optimism that we all -- celebrities, idealogues, lovers, and fools -- can reinvent ourselves for the better, and that miracles can happen when we dare to meet "The Other" as real people, not polarized media creations.
Although Varon wrote "Rush Limbaugh in Night School" for himself as a one-man vehicle, the Mapleleaf production is cast with four actors sharing the roles -- the astonishing Jim McCormack as Limbaugh, two utility players, and a deadpan PBS narrator. Though occasionally that leads to stagy moments where one actor is speaking while others freeze, it also opens up the play and emphasizes both the physical comedy and human connection.
Large and balding, McCormack looks and sounds so much like Limbaugh it's eerie, and his wide-eyed double takes are priceless. His portrayal has a melancholy sweetness to it, that of a pressured traveller on vacation in an exotic land who gets the sudden urge to go native.
As love interest Nina, Yvonne E. Pilarczyk is wonderfully droll, and the two have a relaxed chemistry together that is natural and appealing. She's also funny as the Israeli somatic feminist lecturer who exhorts the audience to "feeellll your super body!" instead of worshipping the technology of superconductors and supercolliders.
Comic dynamo Pat Mazzarino plays a host of male roles, including Limbaugh's smarmy agent, the hallucinating Gray, Jackie Mason improvising borscht belt schtick, and Homo Ludens. And as the PBS documentary narrator, John Busser manages to retain his poker face while intoning the most outrageous throwaway lines. ("Now, as a premium to our subscribers: a five-part series by John Bradshaw on dealing with the loss of an area code.")
The production, directed by Ritchey and Vick E. Naegellen, is staged bare-bones simple on a grey platform set with a few lights, with an onstage microphone for Limbaugh's caustic broadcasts. The picnic-style atmosphere lends a warm informality to the proceedings.
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