Review Roundup: TAIL! SPIN! Opens Off-Broadway

Tail! Spin!, the outrageously entertaining verbatim reenactment of four recent preposterous sex scandals, opens tonight, October 1 at 7 pm at the Lynn Redgrave Theater at Culture Project (45 Bleecker Street at Lafayette Street). The cast of Tail! Spin! features Arnie Burton (39 Steps, Peter and the Starcatcher), Rachel Dratch ("Saturday Night Live"), Sean Dugan (Next Fall, "Smash"), Tom Galantich ("House of Cards") and Nate Smith (UCB, FunnyOrDie.com).

Using nothing but the words spoken, emailed, tweeted, texted and told by the politicians themselves, Tail! Spin! is created and written by Mario Correa (co-host of Entertainment Weekly's daily "News & Notes" program on SiriusXM and contributor to NPR and WNYC) and directed by Tony-nominee Dan Knechtges (Lysistrata Jones, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee).

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: In "Tail! Spin!," a clever comedy revisiting hanky-panky-in-high-office scandals, we are reminded how frequently sexual misbehavior and political posturing have clashed, to mortifying effect, in the lives of elected American officials in recent years...What's jaw-dropping about the tales in "Tail! Spin!" is the conviction you come away with that our elected leaders appear to believe that their anointment somehow comes with a magic shield of invisibility...Like the rest of the cast, the gifted Ms. Dratch flits among her many roles with deadpan panache, her raccoon-eyed stare often underlining the preposterousness of the words she's speaking...

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter: The piece is wittily staged by Dan Knechtges...Weiner, whose very name gets the expected laugh, is amusingly depicted by Nate Smith as a sneering, arrogant sex maniac, with his Twitter account recipients, including a stripper named Ginger, offering their own acerbic asides. Foley (Arnie Burton) is seen manically reciting the lascivious text messages he sent to young male congressional pages, one of whom is heard responding with Valley Girl-style vocal inflections. Coming across worst of all is the endlessly self-involved, clearly deluded Sanford, brilliantly lampooned by Tom Galantich...The bare-bones production features informatory projections and has been updated since its premiere...Much like Forbidden Broadway, this seems the sort of show that can run a long time with frequent revisions since it doesn't appear likely that politicians are going to learn to keep it in their pants anytime soon.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: Not all scandals are created equal in the hilarity department. So this party balloon of a show deflates now and then over the course of its 75 minutes. But the cast rocks steady throughout. Ex-Idaho Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig (Sean Dugan) gets the show off on the right foot -- in every sense. That's the foot he reportedly tapped under a stall in an airport bathroom, effectively flushing his career. Also in the spotlight: the vanishing and verbose South Carolina Republican Mark Sanford (Tom Galantich), whose enabling flacks said their boss was "hiking the Appalachian Trail." He wasn't. Florida Rep. Mark Foley (Arnie Burton) relives his online dalliance with a teenage page. Nate Smith shines in that part, in a show where actors play several different roles. Closer to home, horndog New York high achiever Rep. Anthony Weiner (Smith again) goes down in flames...Like Smith, Dratch reprises parts she played at the Fringe staging. The ex-"SNL" player is a riot playing wives, lovers and, especially, Barbara Walters...Dratch never misses a beat or a laugh. If only politicians were as reliable.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post: If we've learned something from Washington sex scandals, it's that many politicians are idiots -- horny, overconfident idiots with a need to overshare and an inability to keep it in their pants.
It's a sad state of affairs for the country, but a godsend for comedy...Correa wisely realized it'd be hard to improve on the public record, so he cobbled the script out of actual e-mails, tweets, excerpts from press conferences and TV interviews...Zippily staged by Dan Knechtges ("Lysistrata Jones"), the evening looks at each of those fools in succession...A quartet of actors expertly plays the men, all of them laughably vain with undertones of creepiness -- the worst in that regard is Arnie Burton's bug-eyed Foley, sending filthy messages to high school boys. Former "SNL" cast member Rachel Dratch tackles all the women. She's equally at ease playing Craig's long-suffering wife as she is as Huma Abedin, who holds up her nose as she stands by Weiner (Nate Smith).

Matthew Murray, Talkin' Broadway: Political scandals are supposed to be no laughing matter, but someone forgot to tell Mario Correa. The mastermind behind Tail! Spin!...has succeeded in making completely losing all faith in our elected officials one of the best times you're likely to have at the theater this fall. Whether you take this as good news or bad news, Correa, director Dan Knechtges, and a cast led by a pitch-perfect Rachel Dratch, ensure that you always take it as funny...Correa's skillful blending of speeches and sound bites, both verbal and digital, skewers the men even as it comments on the underlying cultural sclerosis that spawned them...it doesn't have to be revolutionary in its content: Its organization and scalpel-edged insight on how related and unrelated moments can interlock to form a greater, scarier point about the people we elect to make our laws brands it instantly as satire that, most of the time, is just a little too real.

Check back in the AM for updates!

Photo Credit: Jessica Fallon Gordon