If opening night reviews are to be believed, the newest theatre hit of the year may have just premiered in Minneapolis last night.
Conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham has embarked on an ambitious venture that is sure to make most mainstream (left of Karl Marx) theatre critics scratching their heads – if not pulling the hair out of them. In the wake of her best-selling book, “The Obama Diaries” Ingraham has assembled a multi-media stage extravaganza complete with actors playing the roles of the President and First Lady.
I’m looking forward to providing our readers with a first-hand critical assessment of the production, but until then we’ll have to rely on some of the lucky folks in the audience last night. According to “MinnCon” at Redstate:
In a word, the show was “Obamalicious,” (satirically heavy on the “malicious”) and combined live onstage narration and hosting by Ingraham with real audio clips, photos, videos, and skewering-yet-spot-on impersonations of our imperious President and the First Lady by two fine performers.
Played – no, NAILED – by actors Russell Brown and Selma Schmidt (I believe those were the names – a printed program was not provided) the fictional secret thoughts of Mr. and Mrs. Prez came to life in all of their vainglory.
For the record, Reggie Brown played Obama and Sonja Schmidt played Michelle and yes, I hear their performances are spot-on and hilarious.
From my perspective (and the perspective of any good capitalist) the only real measure of a show is how it does at the box office. And by that measure, “Obama Diaries, LIVE” appears to be a hit. The show played to capacity audiences in not-so-conservative Minneapolis. If the show can play there, imagine how it will do in Dallas.
Another source who attended over the weekend reports that the plot device used to frame the subject matter is hilarious and the cameo appearances made the show a once-in-a-lifetime experience:
The White House, the story goes, had tried to book the theater on the same day, which set up a brutal exchange on stage between Ingraham and the Obamas. The evening involved several surprise elements that brought the crowd to its feet. Academy Award Winner Jon Voight, Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, and bestselling writer Vince Flynn made appearances on stage.
“Over the weekend people heard how funny the show was,” Ingraham told us, “so now I’m weeding through a dozen other requests to bring it to other cities across the country. If I didn’t have my radio show and my Fox News duties, I’d tour it like The Ice Capades.” The next stop for the Obama Diaries is Texas later this month (Dallas Nov 20, and Houston Nov 21).
Just as critics raved about Will Farrell’s semi-coherent “Thank You, America” last season, I’m sure this stage presentation will be met with the same level of enthusiastic gushing. After all, political satire has no ideology, right? It’s merely about poking fun at our leaders no matter their party affiliation. “Laugh at the king or he’ll make you cry” goes the lyric from Stephen Sondheim’s “Anyone Can Whistle”. “Truth to Power”, don’t ya know? Yeah, we’ll see.