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    An engaging piece of musical theater gives up halfway through

  • Market Economics

    If Mayor Newsom lives up to his promises, there's no reason Market Street can't become a thriving theater district -- and very quickly

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    A queered-up Dinner is funny, but loses its subtlety

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National Features >

  • Miami New Times

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  • Houston Press

    Crime Doesn't Pay Back

    In Texas, restitution for victims is nothing but a state-sanctioned sham.

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  • Seattle Weekly

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Rush Limbaugh in Night School

Charlie Varon's hilarious one-man tour de force feels its age

By Michael Scott Moore

Published on December 15, 2004

Charlie Varon has revived and revamped his hilarious 1994 solo tour de force, a satire that may owe more than a little to Tom Stoppard's Travesties (see above), about Rush Limbaugh and a cast of mostly still-relevant national figures from the left and right. When a conservative Latino radio host threatens Limbaugh's dominance in a Florida market, the potbellied pundit puts on a beard and enrolls in Spanish night classes (at the New School), where he falls in love with a fugitive ex-member of the Weather Underground. For obscure reasons Limbaugh also tries to play Othello in blackface, in a star-studded production with Garrison Keillor, directed by Spalding Gray. Things go predictably to hell. Varon's in full command of his characters; the voices are sharp, if not perfect; and his timing is hard to beat. But he and Limbaugh are both visibly older. Varon's point in 1994 was that Limbaugh had upended the whole idea of satire -- he'd turned a traditional weapon of the underprivileged into a tool of power, and the last 10 years have only shown how potent that strategy can be. Limbaugh was pretty much on his own in 1994; lately his talk-radio spawn have probably helped a) elect a new governor in California, and b) re-elect a president. Depressing.