Will Durst's Bipartisan Bashing: Yesterday's News

Wearing the kind of white suit that brings to mind Mark Twain, sporting a likeable everyman presence like Will Rogers and armed with today's newspaper, the weapon of choice for both Rogers and Mort Sahl, Will Durst never strays far from the traditional image of the American political humorist in his Off-Broadway engagement The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing.  Lounging on a throne built with stacks of newspapers with a pair of boxing gloves resting on one arm and a cup of Starbucks c offee set on the other, Durst describes himself as "a raging moderate"; part of the 60% in the middle whose main political belief is that nobody should butt into anyone else's personal business.

Durst is a funny guy and I was laughing quite a bit during his 85-minute riff on the red, green (there's one Ralph Nader joke) and blue, directed by Eric Krebs.  Just don't go in expecting fresh perspectives or the exploration of new satirical ground.  There's the now standard routine of simply quoting actual statements by President Bush ("More and more of our imports are coming from overseas.") and plenty of knocks on the perceived wimpishness of the Democrats  ("The reason the Democrats are so intent on passing a stem-cell bill is they're depending on the research to grow themselves a spine."), plus a bit or two about John Kerry and even Michael Dukakis.  Funny?  Yes!  But although he did have some fresh material on Karl Rove at Tuesday night's performance, more of the jokes seemed rescued from the recycling bin than ripped from the headlines.

My eyebrow was raised a bit on his comment explaining the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Maria Shriver marriage, the closest he came to crossing the line into bad taste, but for the most part Bipartisan Bashing contains more genial, good-natured ribbing than the knockout punches it promises.  Naturally, George Bush and Dick Cheney, being the ones in power, are the more frequent targets for his jabs (He calls the latter the devil and charges the former with being a Wheel Of Fortune president in a Jeopardy world), but Hillary Clinton gets off with no more than gentle pokes at her perceived lack of femininity and the worst he can say about Barak Obama is that his name sounds too much like "Iraq Osama."

As a grand finale, and if nothing else it's a grand feat of memorization, Durst goes into a lengthy multi-adjective, decidedly partisan, rapid-fire spiel denouncing every conceivable aspect of the Bush administration, capping the bit with a snarling, "Impeachment?  Hell, no!  Impalement!"  And if the joke wasn't so similar to a popular slogan from the Watergate years, I might have laughed myself silly at that one.

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