If there’s one thing disappointing about having an eloquent president in office, it’s that we no longer get to enjoy the entertainment afforded by Bushisms. Love him or hate him, only Dubya could come up with lines like, “If we don’t succeed, we’ll run the risk of failure,” or “We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.” It’s in this kind of vein that FringeNYC, the annual international theater festival over two weeks in August, recently featured George and Laura Bush Perform…Our Favorite Sitcom Episodes at the Players Theater, a comedic play that lampoons George W.’s legacy with spot-on impersonations and doses of absurdity.
Just the premise of the 80-minute satire, written by Ryan Gajewski and directed by Kevin Lambert, is hilarious: George and Laura Bush, fresh out of the White House, are bored. Trying to fill up their time post-Oval Office, they turn to acting — reenacting some of their favorite TV sitcoms (the show’s website once boasted a line-up that included Friends and Seinfeld). They score a deal with NBC and, along the way, encounter a TV exec named Diamond Steal-Second (Robert Micheli), and, get this, “Matt LeBlanc” from Friends (John J. Isgro).
Peter Zernick and Jennifer Tullock as George and Laura Bush. Photo by: Kevin Lambert
This wacky set-up is carried almost entirely on the shoulders of Peter Zerneck (George) and Jennifer Tullock (Laura). Though neither were exactly dead-ringers for the former President or First Lady physically, each embodied their characters so completely that it was impossible to not feel an instant recognition when they both first hobbled onto the stage. Zerneck’s George W. was a hysterically breathless, Texas-twang, spacey, gun-toting cowboy who had a penchant for spewing lines like “I used to own America.” His funny asides directly addressing the audience reminded me how those who tend to over-explain are often the kind who don’t “get it” themselves, because they assume others are likewise slow to understand. Tullock’s Laura, on the other hand, was a sharp, purposefully and amusingly stiff straight man next to George.
The first act had the two reenacting the “chocolate-factory” episode from I Love Lucy, with plenty of witty, old-married-couple-style banter. Pretty soon, though, it became clear that the play had loftier ambitions than simply performing some caricatures of George and Laura, and the plot swiveled into a complicated digression involving time-traveling to South America and renegotiating with Hugo Chavez, one of the not-so-subtle critiques of Bush’s foreign policy sprinkled throughout the show. By the time act 2 rolled around, any pretense about performing sitcoms had been dropped altogether, and we witnessed a series of surprising plot twists that can only be described as bizarre. Without spoiling the somewhat rushed ending, I’ll just say that you may never see Laura Bush the same way again after watching this show.
On the whole, this was a fantastic idea that had strong performances at its heart. But I did wish that the show stuck more to what it looked like it would be: a silly play within a play about an ex-President and his wife acting out sitcoms. Instead, it veered into realms that were rather baffling. Not exactly what I expected, but still an amusing parody of a President whose legacy may very well forever be linked to his Bushisms and his mixture of self-confidence and self-righteousness. After all, as Laura tells George at one point, “You have always known you’ll go to heaven. You are a Bush.”
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http://www.georgeandlaurabushperform.com/index.html
Last 5 posts by Pearl Chen
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