Red Hot Patriot: The Kick–Ass Wit of Molly Ivins at the Lyric Stage Company, Boston

Red Hot Patriot: The Kick–Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.
by Margaret Engel & Allison Engel
Directed by Courtney O’Connor
Set, Katharine Burkhart; Costumes, Sarie Gessner; Lights, Chris Brusberg; Sound, Chris Kurtz.
Staged by the Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon Street, Boston, MA,
Through January 31.

The kick-ass surprise of the night was to hear that star actress Karen McDonald is in the hospital. “She is fine, she wants you to know, and will be out of the hospital next week,” said a member of the Lyric Stage Board of Directors. The house lights had just dimmed. We were expecting the usual remarks (“If you love the play tell everyone, if you don’t, don’t say a word…” “Turn off your phones and that includes texting please” “The exits are…”) and were greeted with this bombshell.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the next thing he said was, “Paula Plum will be reading the part. She has agreed to do this on little notice (last Tuesday). Give her all the support you can.” I admire Paula Plum. But geez. I thought McDonald would fit in to the role of Molly Ivins like a well-worn glove. Just about every critic in New England had gone gaga over her performance.

House goes dark. Stage lights come up. There’s Molly Ivins, leaning back on a task chair, big red hair, blue denim shirt over a red jersey, jeans with a pair of well worn brown cowboy boots draped over a grey metal desk. The audience applauds. Ivins/Plum acknowledges with a conspiratorial grin and a slight wave… then picks up the script.

The play opens with Ivins trying for the umpteenth time to write a column about her authoritarian father who is dying. His presence as a motivating force in Ivins’ life resurfaces often.

I’ll tell you, not many actors in town could have done what Plum pulls off. She homes in on Ivins thick-as-grease on chicken-fried steak Texas accent and begins to chomp into the script.

Molly Ivins was born into privilege. Daughter of a powerful Houston oil man, cold, conservative, demanding, authoritarian, she traded in the silver spoon for a silver spur that sat like a burr under her saddle for the rest of her life.  Tall, big boned, a shock of red hair, and a big mouth, she always stuck out in a crowd, not always for the reasons another woman might want.

A key to the fact that Paula Plum can pull off the role as she pauses often to glance at the script is that Ivins was so damn funny. (So is Plum when she says, “Why don’t we try that one again…” when she messes up a line of dialogue.) Her wit was dry as tumbleweed and could bite like a rattlesnake. “God gave me all this material!” she gushed after getting a job covering the Texas legislature.

One fabulous example referring to U.S. Representative James Collins: “If his I.Q. slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.” Several advertisers and subscribers canceled their support for the Dallas Times Herald after that one. In her defense, her editors rented billboards that read: “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?” The slogan became the title of the first of her six books.

When Ivins describes a “community chicken killing festival” in New Mexico as a  “gang pluck” you get the idea that she could not help tweaking authority, in this case the New York Times, which was paying her salary (“I was miserable, at five times my previous salary…”).

She may have been able to trade in her Texas drawl for one more suited to her Smith College education but her sensibilities were pure Texas…rough and tumble, irreverent and often fueled with alcohol.  She fearlessly and rambunctiously skewered Iraq war President George W. Bush, with whom she’d been in school in Houston as a kid.

Molly was a populist much like Mark Twain, with whom her humor and dry observations about America and its citizens is often compared. Both manage to sandwich contempt and ridicule with a sense of humor that softened repugnance for their targets. Of the six newspapers for whom she wrote for from 1970 to 2006, four were in Texas. Whether she wrote in Minneapolis or New York, her sensibilities were always deep in the heart of Texas.

Ivins would be an anachronism these days. The well-rendered set, with its file cabinets, bundles of newspapers, gray metal desk and humongous bulletin board with curled pages of newspaper columns pinned to it, won’t resemble today’s newsroom, even in remote regions of Texas. It’s hard to imagine a commentator with her populist, opinionated voice commanding an audience again. It’s also hard not to wish someone would rise to the occasion.

The play is written with fond purpose by twin sisters Allison and Margaret Engel, both journalists. The images projected over the bulletin board behind Ivins’ desk of her father, family and friends, and targets during her career give her narrative a feel for the people person Ivins was and a welcome visual context to go with the torrent of Ivins' words.

Her opinions course through the dialogue like waves continually lapping onto a beach. Her feelings though… “I’m one of those people out of touch with my emotions. I treat my emotions like unpleasant relatives — a long-distance call once or twice a year is more than enough. If I got in touch with them, they might come to stay.’’ As is clear from what the dialogue insinuates, Ivins certainly heard them knocking.

In 2006, she reported that her breast cancer diagnosed in 1999 had recurred. “First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you,” she wrote. “I have been on blind dates better than that.” Pure Ivins. Born in 1945, she died a year later at 62.

The play closes as Ivins pounds on the keys of her manual typewriter to finish that piece from the opening scene after learning of her father “The General”’s death.

After 75 minutes, whether channeled by Karen McDonald who knew the script inside out or Paula Plum who reads it, I realize we need Molly Ivins kick-ass words, attitude, and admonishment more than ever.

As usual, she has the last word. It’s not “What would Molly do?” It’s “What would YOU do?” Ivins tells us as the lights dim and she walks off stage.

Comments

[KB Jones]

glad you got to see this. My friend was there when Karen got sick (glad she's ok), so I didn't get anything like your (fine) report from her.

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

Producing Artistic Director Spiro Veloudos Spiro Veloudos told me that Paula had five hours to rehearse...what a trooper... and what a pro.

[Nona Bock]

Just skimmed your Red Hot Patriots piece. Kathleen Turner did it here. Frankly, I was disappointed in the script. I loved MI and think highly of Kathleen Turner, but would have preferred just rereading some of her columns. -- The play was a thumbs down for me.

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

I'm stunned, would have thought Turner would have been perfectly cast. I agree that Ivins' columns are rich and rowdy observations about Texas and American politics. The two writers of the play give us an idea of what motivated Ivins' funny and acerbic takes on authority figures who also happen to be politicians.

[Sarah Mills]

What a wonderful trip, seeing someone pinch-hit in that role! Molly was my Smith classmate, BTW. I knew her starting as a freshman because a high school classmate of hers in Houston (then a freshman at Wellesley) was one of my best friends all through summer camp, and she had made sure that I would look Molly up - turned out she lived in the house right around the corner from mine.

[Nona Bock]

Kathleen Turner was perfectly cast---and she did a great job, with what she was given.