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The Strangerer
By Mickle Maher
No director used
Produced by Theater Oobleck
At Chopin Theater
1543 W. Division Street
Chicago, IL
Call 773-347-1042, tickets $10 :more if you can give it, free if your broke”
Thursdays thru Saturdays at 8 pm
Sundays at 3 pm
Running time is 1 hour, 50 minutes without intermission
Through June 28, 2008
Political satire covers several themes
Theater Oobleck’s crew gave fantastic performances as principles players in the 2004 Presidential debates: Colm O’Reilly as Jim Lehrer, Mickle Maher as John Kerry and Guy Massey as George W. Bush. The play, The Strangerer, penned by Mickle Maher, is a clever, witty and multi-layered piece filled with satire, humor and wrenching emotions. It attempts to answer the burning question: Why does our president want to kill a lot of innocent people?
Influenced by Albert Camus’ The Stranger, playwright Mickle Maher thought the French philosopher could shed light on out President’s propensity to kill innocent folks as part of his foreign policy.
The Strangerer uses a Presidential debate of 2004 as the platform for depicting Bush’s folly. One of the keys to making this work are the hilarious and satirically stinging, spot-on performances by the three member cast. Colm O’Reilly has Jim Lehrers speech manner down pat while Mickle Maher has John Kerry’s empty stilted manner going. The finest imitation comes from Guy Massey’s amazingly detailed portrayal of President Bush. Massey has the speech mannerism, the physical gestures, and the squinting facial and eye movements that define the stupidity of our President. Most of the humor in this piece comes from the vivid and accurate portrait Massey gives as Bush.
The debate is interrupted several times by Bush’s simulated attempts to kill Jim Lehrer—first with a knife, then with a pistol. This devise leads to a story of how Bush secretly loves the theatre and how he and Kerry went to a play the night before their Florida debate. Playwright Maher cleverly interweaves Bush’s irrational desire to kill Jim Lehrer with his acting out a scene from the play he witnessed the night before. All the responses from both Bush and Kerry address, not Lehrer’s debate questions, but their response to the attempt killing and their reaction to the play they saw the night before. We see Kerry redefining himself in terms of that scenario while Bush slowly, through several monologues, self destructs as his paranoia and delusional behavior completely overwhelms him. Many laughs ensure from these scenes. Kerry excuses himself because he falls asleep at key moments in his life.
For the first 45 minutes, we are fully engaged and laugh heartily at the spot-on comedic timing and witty satire. However, the play drags on much too long (one hour and fifty minutes) as the play beats to death the premise of the attempt killing of Lehrer and the overwrought destruction of Bush and Kerry’s sleep problems. Ultimately, the redundancy, the too many long monologues and the repetition of Bush’s style, speech mannerism became tedious. A cut of 20-30 minutes would serve this work nicely. I sense the audience growing tired as the play dragged on. Still, the Bush haters and political active audience members were delighted. Guy Massey was outstanding as George W. Bush.
Somewhat Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: May 2, 2008
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