Recent Stories with tag satire

Annex fields a large, capable cast for "Her Mother Was Imagination." (Photo: Ian Johnston/Annex Theatre)

Her Mother Was Imagination (at Annex Theatre through August 28), the dystopian satire from local playwright Elizabeth Heffron and collaborators Ellie McKay (director), Max Reichlin, and Daniel Worthington, is at war with many things, one of them being my desire to laugh all the way through the play. It's a fitfully entertaining fever dream, never settling on being either satire that leaves a mark, a timely cautionary tale about the world to come, or an affecting allegory about women's restricted choices.

At $15, you're getting more than your money's worth, except in lumbar support. The play stretches to two and a half hours so that it can fit all its targets in--Beck, LDS, eugenics, climate-change deniers, elderly patriarchs, young men who are dicks, whacked-out revolutionary feminists, subservient artists--but as the play progresses, the satirical impulse that fueled its opening number is sapped by earnestness.

From sketchy scene to scene, the energy level varies, and an unwonted sense of profanely dramatic importance grows, as if Will It Blend had tried works by Margaret Atwood and Mamet. Heffron's knack for dragooning historical figures (see Mitzi's Abortion, New Patagonia) into hilariously effective duty hasn't deserted her, but here her imported personages are made mostly of straw.

A raucous opening pageant retells how the prophet Glenn Beck (complete with mythologizing, homespun song, right out of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett") withdrew from public life as a "TV soldier" to the upper reaches of an empty high-rise (the WaMu tower, apparently). Beck's mask is on top of someone's head (none of the press materials notes who plays what role), so that when the actor's head is lowered, Beck's beady-eyed grin comes at you like a battering ram.... (more)

Phil Campbell

Filming around Seattle just now is the indie film Grassroots, described by its makers thusly: "A short-tempered, unemployed music critic who likes to dress as a polar bear thinks he can harness the power of the people to ride the monorail to political victory in Seattle."

Grassroots is based on a book called Zioncheck for President, by erstwhile alt-weekly reporter Phil Campbell. It's a hilarious, scarring, gadfly of a book built on the premise that all politics is local loco. Or maybe it's just that the people who decide to go into politics are "tetched" in some way to begin with.

Campbell contrasts his management of Grant Cogswell's ill-fated City Council campaign with the rise and all-too-literal fall of U.S. Rep. Marion Zioncheck, a Depression-era Washington state firebrand. Nothing is airbrushed out.

Campbell was at work at his day job in late 2006 when he got an email from his editor at Nation Books, saying that Stephen Gyllenhaal had read Zioncheck and was interested in making a movie from the book. After meeting up with Gyllenhaal at a hotel bar, Campbell signed away all the rights--"He can make the movie he wants. I didn't want to impose any restrictions on how so-and-so had to be portrayed, me or anyone else."

The movie's cast now includes Jason Biggs (American Pies), Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under), Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother), Cedric the Entertainer (as Richard McIver), and Tom Arnold (as the bartender). Presumably Capitol Hill's cafes and bars--in which much campaign strategizing takes place--will play themselves.

Campbell himself is visiting town this week--he lives now in Brooklyn, and works in Manhattan--for an appearance at the Sorrento's Night School series with The Stranger's philosophical eminence Charles Mudede. It'll be a "discussion about capturing the spirit of time and place in both words and film," and Campbell will also read from his new satirical novel set in Memphis in the age of global warming. It's this Thursday, July 8, and doors open at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free, but you must RSVP to kerri.benecke@hotelsorrento.com.

Tell me a little about your new book....