Today, I got all gleeful reading this story in the Washington Post about a play that sounds like a Harpy’s dream: the deliciously mature Kathleen Turner as the witty and wicked Molly Ivins, liberal commentator extraordinaire.
“Red-Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins” is a 75-minute foray into the psyche of a sassy commentator perhaps most celebrated for a single word: “Shrub,” the withering nickname she gave to George W. Bush, a politician who symbolized for her all that seemed wacky in the reward system of American politics.
Written by a pair of newspaperwomen — Bethesda-based Margaret Engel, a former Washington Post staffer, and her twin sister Allison, communications director at the University of Southern California — the play styles Ivins as a live-wire wit who, in her profane, folksy way juiced up the public discourse. (You may recall that the first of her books was titled, “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?”) And she accomplished this from a perspective honed far from the Beltway.
“She was our Mark Twain,” says Margaret Engel. “She really is the larger-than-life American character who comes around quite rarely, and had a way of seeing things with a clarity you don’t find often.”
“Red Hot Patriot” is playing from now until April 19 at the Philadelphia Theater Company. If any of y’all see it, tell me how it is! I’m considering hopping on Amtrak for this one…
Didn’t she also say, of W, “He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.”?
Love her!
@ShinyObjects – Yes, and, my personal favorite, after W’s big post-9/11 “Brave New World / we need a Department of Homeland Security” spiel her response was, “That speech probably sounded better in the original German.”
I cried when she died.
@Yvan: Me too. Losing her AND Ann Richards in only a couple months was just BRUTAL.
There’s a brief mention at the end of that article about a one-woman show to star Holland Taylor as Ann Richards, which I would LOVE. If there is a heaven, it includes me, Molly and Ann sitting around eating cake.
I also cried when she died.
One of my dad’s uber-conservative redneck co-workers gave him a copy of “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That Can She?” as a not so veiled insult. He loved it, and passed it on to me. I bought all the rest of her books and we traded them back and forth.
She was a huge inspiration, and the reason I haven’t given up on my dad through his latest redneck bullshit spouting phase. The scary thing is, he’s still more liberal than most of his co-workers.
AND, I want to add, I really hope that play makes it to Seattle. I desperately want to see it.
I loved Molly Ivins. Her wry wit was so plain spoken and right to the point. I saw her interviewed once on PBS. Fantastic.