The Arkansas Repertory Theatre rose from the dead last week, lifted for five nights by the Arkansas cocoon of anti-Trump liberalism that certain sectors of Little Rock provide.
This was the biennial Gridiron production of musical spoofing of newsmakers by the local Bar Association. And it seemed to aspire to greater artistic heights and political edginess this year.
Writers and director-choreographer Jane Beard appeared to have challenged the bravely willing amateur hams in the local law fraternity to rise to the Trumpian occasion, to the volatile and maybe seminal moment in American history.
On Wednesday evening, the second night of the run, the tone was set in the pre-show introductions of political figures brave enough to attend. U.S. Rep. French Hill, the local Republican congressional disciple of Donald Trump, got polite applause. His Democratic opponent, Clarke Tucker, got boisterous applause.
It meant nothing, really. The white liberal wards of Little Rock had emptied into the theater for the right. This was a Democratic crowd, practically a Tucker rally.
Word of Tucker's popularity in that group and at that event will do him scant good on his next trip to the 2nd District's Trump-adoring hinterland. And Hill deserves points simply for showing up, for sitting through a barrage of disparagements of his president, some not quite tasteful enough for the squeamish.
There was no skit about the big local story of state legislative corruption. There was nothing about this uncommonly high-profile mayor's race in the city. There was no satirical commentary on the monster freeway to be built through downtown.
The show was like this column in that respect--less local than before, owing to the perceived necessity to comment on the uncommon national spectacle.
You might be putting the finishing touches on a local-subject column, or a local Gridiron segment. And then Trump might tweet. To the keyboard you must return.
There was this show's theme: Trump, played with a steady flourish by the excessively wigged Craig Wilson, had come to Arkansas--a "bleephole," he mutters--to produce a parade, nearly every float of which had something to do with him, of course, and his unrelenting assault of megalomaniacal affronts over these many months.
One skit soared to brilliance, at least conceptually. I extend my highest compliments to the secret writer or writers who thought of it.
It featured strong-voiced Kathryn Pryor as Lady Liberty, weary, with democracy under attack, and Trump pursuing her from stage left to stage right, harassing her, even running his hand under her lower attire as if to reach for the place he has famously boasted of grabbing with impunity. And it had Lady Liberty fending off the assault to lift her torch high and declare firmly, "Hashtag: Me, too."
The line served to introduce the next skit about the political rise of women. But, more than that, it was a metaphor. Trump was grabbing the beleaguered nation by her private parts, by her lofty ideals, and she was steeling in resistance.
I sat there thinking, my goodness, this is stout, bold, chancy, not exactly without power. I looked around the theater, expecting that surely some unsuspecting Trump supporter had come simply to be amused, maybe to support the performance of a lawyer friend, and instead walked into a political protest he found unendurable. But I didn't see anyone walking out, not even French Hill.
The woman behind me said after the show that she had almost cried during that skit.
A happier moment came during the finale when Ruth Shepherd, a leader of the effort to save The Rep, took center stage to thank the lawyers for relaying all proceeds to the campaign to re-open the theater. She announced that sufficient progress had been made to signal that the theater indeed would reopen, albeit with perhaps a different production schedule.
But that was only a signal, not a final assessment, and, as we exited, we were handed pledge cards.
The island that is Little Rock needs to ante up, both for these biennial amateur exercises in political edginess and the more-regular professional productions.
I surely do a disservice by leaving an impression that The Rep is a perennially liberal place and the Gridiron a perennially liberal show. The Rep over the years has been a regional mecca for shows that are simply fun. And the Gridiron was purely Trump-reactive this year.
I remember a Gridiron presentation in the '80s, before widespread media coverage of Bill Clinton's sexual escapades, but after universal coverage of Gary Hart's, in which characters portraying Hart and Clinton performed "To All the Girls We've Loved Before."
A biennial satirical revue is going to pounce on whatever is most spoof-able at the time, and perhaps offend.
It so happens that in 2018 we're living through the great spoof of our time.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 08/05/2018