Stage Review: Capitol Steps' 'Electile Dysfunction' rewards healthy irreverence

You might think Pittsburghers have had their fill of battleground state politics the past few months, but not the happy throng that packed the Byham Sunday afternoon for those serenading satirists, Capitol Steps, providing a jam-packed 100 minutes of political humor.

In fact, the vociferous glee with which the audience responded to caricatures of the major players in the presidential race probably does express some exasperation. They've been haranguing us a lot, so it was invigorating to be able to laugh back at them. And of course the seriousness of the underlying issues means we have to let off steam somehow.

Me, I come at this from a slightly different angle. Not of partisanship -- if you can tell from the relative degrees of Sunday's hilarity, I'd say my political preference was in line with a majority of the audience -- but as a long-time teacher of satire at Pitt and a fellow practitioner of the onstage satiric arts.

As native Pittsburgh theatrical guru George S. Kaufman once said, topical satire has a very short shelf life. My own contribution is to produce the annual "Off the Record," which could be described as a Pittsburgh version of Capitol Steps, albeit with a cast of two dozen and a storyline. So for eight years I've seen the Byham bubbling with that same irreverent glee (oddly enough, I was also sitting in my usual seat), and I know just how hard it is to get comedy, caricature, lampoon, spoof and occasionally satire itself to lift off into delight.

These guys are good, starting with the clever title of this edition, "Electile Dysfunction." It did take me longer than much of the audience to get into it, because their revue format -- one discrete number following another briskly -- doesn't have much thematic coherence or cumulative build. A lot of the early stuff seemed pretty predictable. And maybe I had a touch of "show-me" attitude.

But gradually I melted before the skill of the five performers, especially the men (the Sarah Palin wasn't very good, for one -- how can you not do a great Sarah Palin?). The two numbers that really sent me over the edge into helpless laughter were the most tried and true, a clever, gagging-for-air funny adaptation of that dependable old standby, "Who's on First," and a brilliant, tour-de-force essay in Spoonerisms.

If you don't remember, that's the kind of semi-nonsense talk where you transpose elements of adjacent words, usually by switching initial consonants, as in calling McCain "a grittle bit lumpy" or speaking of Palin's "spuzzle on her mouse." Our wonderful language is such that silly transpositions often sound vaguely irreverent or even obscene.

As to the songs, as in "Off the Record" the key to this sort of parodic writing is to find a title or phrase that easily converts. For example, how hard is it to conflate "Barack" and "The Leader of the Pack" into "A Leader Named Barack"?

Once you do that, the rest is easy: "Obamamia" ("Mamma Mia"), "FEMA" ("Fever"), "My 401K" (YMCA), "How You Solve a Problem Like Korea," "Mine every mountain, fill every stream," "The Sunni Side of the Street" and "Keep Us Alive, Keep Us Alive" sung by the four elderly moderates on the Supreme Court.

The Capitol Steps writers have a comforting fondness for Broadway standards. They are generally even-handed in their political jabs, as you'd expect. If the audience felt those in one direction were stronger than in another, well, beauty's not the only thing that resides in the eye of the beholder. In general, those jabs weren't vicious. Jonathan Swift wouldn't call it satire, just lampooning. But such objects of irreverence as Larry Craig ("knock three times on the tile if you want me") might disagree.

I really liked the "American Pie" (that's been outsourced to Shanghai) number, and the downsizing United Airlines sketch certainly brought back Brockett and Barbara doing their immortal Agony Airlines number. I'm sorry not to know which performer was which, but the spoonerism sketch and that charming reprobate Bill Clinton ("wherefore am I Romeo?) took the prize.

Irreverent caricature is a hallowed form of political participation, good for the democratic (small D) soul. Now go vote.