COMEDY REVIEW : Capitol Comic Troupe Proves Out of Steps With the ‘90s

FULLERTON —  Where’s the teeth? With apologies to Wendy’s and Walter Mondale, that’s what came to mind as the Capitol Steps did their brisk funny business Friday night at the Wilshire Auditorium.

The comic troupe, made up of current and former cogs in Washington’s bureaucratic machine, offered a rapidly paced, enthusiastically rendered program of jesting and spoofs, using popular melodies as vehicles for clever political humor.

But the Steps’ satire was of the mildest sort. Watching the six-member delegation’s second show Friday night (the group numbers 15 in all), it became clear why political eminences from George Bush on down have a soft spot for the Capitol Steps.

The jokes seldom went beyond lighthearted tweaking and caricature, exploiting familiar character foibles, but lacking pointed insights. Higher satire proceeds from a moral foundation, seeking out stupidity and vice and exposing it in a way that stings the target. It carries an element of ridicule and, quite often, anger. Its victims are not apt to regard it fondly.

The Steps treated their audiences to a soporific Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown as space cadet, and Dan Quayle as a tyke in helicopter beanie and American flag short pants--cartoons we’ve already seen on the op-ed pages.

They bashed lawyers for all the usual reasons, and did a send-up of hippies-turned-yuppies (Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” rendered as “Like a Suburban Drone”).

There was wit in the writing and execution of these sketches that justly earned the chuckles and applause they elicited. But there was no lingering bite to them.

Whether using methods lightly whimsical or angry and harsh, the true satirist really means what he or she says. The Capitol Steps’ instincts are solely comical: The object is to be clever and get a laugh, wherever they may find it. Conviction and a push to reform don’t play a part in it.

The most hilarious moments of the 80-minute performance were pure verbal slapstick: trouper Mike Loomis’ “Jabberwocky”-style recitations of the sex scandals surrounding Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Peewee Herman and Clarence Thomas. Naughty-sounding consonant inversions generated the laughs (example: says Clarence Thomas, or Tarence Chlomas: “There’s something cubic on my poke!”). It wasn’t so much the material itself, as Loomis’ comic zest, that made his two “Lirty Dies” segments telicious dicklers.

That’s not to say the Steps didn’t occasionally make a point that went beyond mere clever caricature. Mario Cuomo, played as a soliloquizing Hamlet, finished his oration with a play on the Dane’s advice to Ophelia, the wording of which many voters would like to see stamped on ballots: “None of the abovery.”

A poke at economic protectionism hit home, as the Steps played “God Bless the U.S.A.” as an advertising theme for some dubious domestically produced alternatives to imports, among them New Jersey-made Toxic’s Choice Coffee and “Cyrano de Shotgunrac,” a made-in-Texas substitute for French cinema.

There was also a deft skewering of political correctness to the tune of “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”--romancing with flowers being one of many common gestures, words and ideas humorously delineated in the song as sexist, racist or otherwise unacceptable (in conformance with P.C., the Steps wryly suggested, Shakespeare, as a white male European, should no longer be considered bard, but barred).

Most of the stronger satiric sallies hit at attitudes, not personages. The Steps might have toughened their satire by turning away from the monologues they used in individual portrayals of George Bush, Pat Buchanan, Daryl Gates, et al, and conjuring up confrontations instead.

Why not have the politicians play off against an opposing interlocutor, preferably from the real world outside the Beltway? By letting Bush duet with an unemployed auto worker, say, or Gates do a turn with a victim of the LAPD’s magnum force philosophy, some sharper satiric tension could have developed.

Also, the Capitol Steps must be faulted for not seizing on the most satire-worthy trait of our syntax-savaging chief executive: his inability to walk a straight line with the English language. Here’s a suggestion: have Bush sing “If I Could Talk to Americans,” to the tune of “If I Could Talk to the Animals.”

Founded in 1981, the Capitol Steps are a product of Ronald Reagan’s affable ‘80s. A more desperate decade calls for satire made of stronger stuff. Maybe a satiric-minded version of “Crossfire,” the liberal-versus-conservative television rant-fest, would fit the bill. You’d have two or more avowedly partisan troupes brandishing barbed wits in back-and-forth sallies, meaning every jibe they fling.

For the time being though, it never hurts to chuckle--and if the Steps are less than provocative in other ways, they at least provoke laughter.