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The 1997 Barry Levinson film Wag the Dog took the idea that politics is 1% decision-making and 99% show biz, and turned it into a satire of Shavian, if not Shakespearean, proportions. Anything could be devised to take the attention off scandal; and today, if anything, it has gotten worse. The public never knows where leadership and trust end and Machiavellian means-to-an-end begin.  In Beau Willimon's savage comedy Farragut North (which opened last Friday at the Unicorn Theatre and is directed by John Rensenhouse), the spin-doctor gets spun--it is a case of the dog getting flogged.

Willimon has filled out his dramatist's curriculum vitae with stints in political campaigns, with such as public figures as Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean. And it shows. His play is riddled with Mametesque profanity, though no more ugly than the reports and rumors of political operatives, from Karl Rove on one side to Rahm Emanuel on the other. Daily politics, here and abroad, is as much about face-saving as governing. Here, we know everyone hits below the beltway.

The play opens in an airport terminal, with a female Times reporter, Ida Horowicz (Manon Halliburton), talking shop with a (fictional) governor's presidential-campaign top aides: Paul Zara (Bruce Roach), press secretary Steve Bellamy (Mark Thomas), and his assistant, Ben (Sam Cordes). The important Iowa Caucus is coming up and everyone is both exhausted and exhilarated. In due time, we learn that Steve, at 25, is a veteran of several big-time campaigns; he recalls them in greedy, salacious detail. Ida and Paul agree, as a slick operator Steve has no peers. Whether or not the playwright is using, say, the tenacious Lee Atwater (who engineered the infamous "Willie Horton" race-baiting ad in the 1980 George H. W. Bush presidential campaign) as a model, any theatre-goer with an interest in politics or history will see how the whiz-kid Steve can be traced in a straight line all the way back to the person who advised Brutus to stab Caesar.

If the opening scene runs a bit roughly (Steve's character is written too hard to impress us of his maleficent qualities), when Steve gets a call from the other candidate's top man, Tom Duffy (an electric performance by the veteran actor Robert Elliott), about a mysterious offer and meets him at a diner to find out what it is about, the play shifts into overdrive. Duffy has an offer almost too tempting to refuse; and he has sensitive information about the two campaigns. If Steve will only jump ship, his career, already rocketing toward the White House, just might land in the Oval Office.

Like a modern-day Faust, Steve's offer from the Devil is not only a career-changer but threatens to make-or take-his soul. Willimon's writing, while not always memorable in a distinctive comic vein (unlike how a screenwriter like Billy Wilder or a playwright like Brecht would go for the farcical), nevertheless draws in the audience with the momentum of Steve's dilemma. The increasingly agitated press secretary is pulled in different directions by Ida, by Paul, by Tom Duffy, and by a curvaceous nineteen-year-old intern, Molly (the scene-stealing Kat Endsley), whose posing as a shy young woman is gradually revealed to be a front for a much more aggressive (and possibly career-building) female. If Molly's role turns out to be a bit of a red herring (the people behind me were sure she was a plant by Tom Duffy), she is more readily written as a mirror image for Steve to see his single-minded ways. What he sees about himself and what he chooses to see evolves into the play's theme.

I don't believe Beau Willimon is cynical about the whole political business (though he never even tries to persuade us that it is not all a business, always); it is a more likely he wrote a comedy that inevitably became a tragedy When politics gets into a person's blood it turns him or her into a vampire of sorts, feasting on other peoples' troubles and secrets. The vampiric metaphor is used toward the very end, after a desperate Steve is hurt in a car wreck: with his face covered in blood, he turns on Molly, who comes to him only to help. Willimon leaves the audience with a strangled laugh in its collective throats.

REVIEW
The Unicorn Theatre
Farragut North
Runs November 13-December 13
3828 Main Street, Kansas City MO.
For tickets call 816-531-7529 or online at www.UnicornTheatre.org

Top photo:
Cast members Paul Zara (Bruce Roach) and Steve Bellamy (Mark Thomas). Photo by Cynthia Levin

By Steve Shapiro

Theatre Contributor

Steve Shapiro has been writing about the arts for over twenty-five years. He wrote and broadcast a weekly radio book review on KCUR-FM for ten years, and has contributed to NPR's Morning Edition book segment.

As a contributor to local publications such as KCMetropolis.org, KC Tribune.com, The Kansas City Star, Review, The Pitch, and Helicon 9, he has published essays and criticism on art, books, cinema, theater and the cultural Zeitgeist.

A chapter on the museum architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Steven Holl was published in the anthology, The Sixth Surface: Steven Holl Lights the Nelson-Atkins Museum (2007). On the side, he juggles Dachshunds and is available to moderate book groups. 

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