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Bush is Bad: The Musical Cure for the Blue-State Blues endeavors to tackle the question: “How can 59 million people be so dumb?” — and that’s just the first number. Josh Rosenblum’s musical revue starring Neal Mayer, Michael McCoy and Kate Baldwin is as delightful as something so wickedly and shamelessly partisan can be. With its modest cast of three immodestly talented vocalists and Rosenblum on the piano, Bush is Bad gleefully deploys its weapon of jackass destruction — mellifluous three-part harmonies — to skewer timely issues like the insidious gay agenda, the haphazard murder of fetuses, “Good Conservative Values” and the glimmering hope of “chimpeachment.”
Bush Is Bad’s brilliant cast does wonderfully with inspired little ditties like “John Bolton Has Feelings, Too”, and a mordantly funny number called “Crazy Ann Coulter”, in which the blonde fright-wigged apparition of the “vaguely robotic” pundit causes the other cast members to shriek in terror or flee to the safety of the wings.
But perhaps the show’s most remarkable achievement is the fact that though its subject matter has left, oh, roughly 55 million people despondent, it manages to be uplifting, rather than a grim mirror of the times. Instead, Rosenblum and company tap into the all-too-human defense mechanism of laughter — lest we cry.
If only Bush is Bad could be an actual cure for the blue-state blues: as soon as the theater door swung shut behind me and the satisfied conviviality of the cabaret disappeared, it was far too easy to remember the fact that Dick, Karl and that “smirking chimp” in the White House are still controlling the system.
Bush Is Bad’s brilliant cast does wonderfully with inspired little ditties like “John Bolton Has Feelings, Too”, and a mordantly funny number called “Crazy Ann Coulter”, in which the blonde fright-wigged apparition of the “vaguely robotic” pundit causes the other cast members to shriek in terror or flee to the safety of the wings.
But perhaps the show’s most remarkable achievement is the fact that though its subject matter has left, oh, roughly 55 million people despondent, it manages to be uplifting, rather than a grim mirror of the times. Instead, Rosenblum and company tap into the all-too-human defense mechanism of laughter — lest we cry.
If only Bush is Bad could be an actual cure for the blue-state blues: as soon as the theater door swung shut behind me and the satisfied conviviality of the cabaret disappeared, it was far too easy to remember the fact that Dick, Karl and that “smirking chimp” in the White House are still controlling the system.
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