Theater (and Politics): Molly Ivins, Back From the Dead and More Needed than Ever

I used to hate Philadelphia. Until sometime around last weekend.
I think it had much to do with a best pal from high school, who went to Philadelphia to attend Drexel University and then largely dropped out of my life. I remember visiting him and resenting everything from the passage of time to the dirt of what I thought was a small-town city.
But last weekend I did not see so much dirt. I saw gorgeous architecture and received fantastic service in restaurants and saw Kathleen Turner play the late, great Molly Ivins in a play called “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.” The show’s running at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, home to the Philadelphia Theatre Company, on South Broad. The show is directed by David Esbjornson, who keeps thing moving along well during a one-act, 75-minute running time. I love that running time.
I also love both Turner and Ivins. Let’s take Turner first. She’s a fine film actress, but she really shines on the stage, where she’s even more physically imposing and gives amazingly nuanced performances. She wuz robbed of the Tony a few years ago when she was starring in an unforgettably good “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” Now she’s playing Ivins, not as a caricature but as a larger-than-life woman who knows that she’s in danger of becoming a caricature.
“Red Hot Patriot” has some weaknesses as a play. Maybe more than some. At least there’s not a lot of silly set-up and effort to make this into something it isn’t, but then again the writers, Margaret Engel and Allison Engel, seem most interested in reminding us who Molly Ivins was, and why she mattered. Still does. She was known for her wisecracks—she gave President George W. Bush the nickname “Shrub” and she famously said of Republican Rep. Jim Collins that if his “IQ slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.” So we get laughs from Ivins, ones she really wrote, and a sense of what is was like to live in the shadow of a domineering (and downright mean, from the looks of things) father. In the final, fantastic few minutes of the show, we also get a sense of the loneliness of an activist/writer’s life and the unpleasant reality that we are not living up to the standards Ivins set for us as citizens.
I’m reading a book now called “Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life” by Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith, so I was overly prepared for the play. I found myself thinking that “Red Hot Patriot” was too much of a mixed bag (lotsa mixing of Texas political history and bad Republican presidents and the Ivins biography) and not enough of any one thing, but certainly I appreciated seeing Turner center stage, looking and sounding fabulous. Working together across the normal barriers of time and life and death, Turner and Ivins team up to remind us of the importance of speaking up and speaking out.
“Red Hot Pat” winds up being a bit more moving than it deserves to be, both because of the woman who inspired it and the woman who presents it. Both women astound me. Both were worth a trip to Philadelphia, my new favorite weekend getaway spot.