Skippyjip Raves About Will Ferrell’s Broadway Show YOU’RE WELCOME, AMERICA: A FINAL NIGHT WITH GEORGE W. BUSH!!

I am – Hercules!!
“Skippyjip,” who says he is not a huge fan of Will Ferrell’s, calls a rehearsal version of Ferrell’s upcoming stage show about George W. Bush “well-crafted,” “smart” and “very, very funny.” Co-written by Ferrell and his “SNL”/“Anchorman” collaborator Adam McKay, it opens Jan. 20 and closes March 15. HBO will telecast it live, likely on or near closing night. I love that they’ve already got a guy throwing shoes from the audience!

Hey Harry, Long time reader, but this is my first scoop/review. I just saw a staged reading of an early version of Will Ferrell’s new one man Broadway Show “You’re Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush.” The show opens at the Court Theatre on Inauguration Day, and tonight was a sort of test “screening” of Ferrell’s material (about an hour and a half of it, all told). He’s in character, as Dubya, from minute one. There’s some audience interaction, but everything is very scripted. This show was presented by Funnyordie.com, and the (small) cast was a veritable who’s who of Funnyordie and UCB favorites, with Owen Burke reading stage directions, Seth Morris as a secret service agent with a deep-seeded love of The Dance, and Chad Carter as a shoe throwing audience plant. Whether The Agent will remain a part of the Broadway production is anyone’s guess. I wouldn’t be surprised (or disappointed) to see a full chorus of Dancing Secret Service agents keeping the audience entertained while Dubya dons a flight jacket or loses his grey suit in favor of jeans and a cowboy hat. That being said, I think they would be remiss not to include Seth Morris among said Agents. He’s too funny to be relegated to the Internet and UCB’s Harold shows. Give the man some screen time, or at least a meaty Broadway contract. Obviously Owen Burke will not be needed to describe “George Duyba being lowered by a helicopter onto the stage” once they’re… y’know… on an actual stage with an actual helicopter, and I’m pretty sure Carter’s shoe-thrower was an impromptu add-in just for tonight. It went over huge, but the event won’t be topical come January 20th. And if this show’s apparent thesis holds water (that Americans have short attention spans and are altogether too forgiving of our leaders’ malpractice), we will have long since forgotten the shoe-hurling Iraqi Journalist and his fate (still TBD). But if Will Ferrell has any say in things, we’ll never forget the man who was the shoe’s intended target. Nor will we forget his historic blunders and incalculable missteps. I’m not going to give away too much of the funny, but since what I saw was a working version and is likely to change dramatically, it wouldn’t matter anyway. In the show, Ferrell’s Bush stumbles through the telling of his childhood adventures, his collegiate misdeeds, his Gubernatorial days in Texas and on through the 2000 election debacle, September 11th, the subsequent coercion of the press and congress, and the consequent invasion of Iraq… oh, we get a small smattering of Hurricane Katrina to boot. Does is sound like a fairly comprehensive history of our 43rd commander in chief? It is. Does it sound like a scathing portrayal of a sitting US President? It is. More so than I would have expected from the relatively non-controversial Mr. Ferrell. Fact and fiction are blended together generously, but Ferrell does an expert job of winking away the fiction, and letting facts land with painful resonance. The kind of resonance that makes you feel a little ashamed for not noticing anything earlier. Or worse: for noticing and looking away. Let me say, at this juncture, something that will no doubt open me up to ridicule and dismissal amidst the talkbackers (if you use this): I am not a big Will Ferrell fan. I used to be, kinda, or at least allowed myself to be dragged along for the ride. As America embraced Will Ferrell, I had a sneaking suspicion that we were being tricked. He was the funniest part of SNL for several rocky, rocky years in the show’s history, but was never enough to actually keep me tuned in weekly. I dug him in Old School, where he was used sparingly, and admittedly fell for Anchorman upon my first viewing. Then I got sick of that character. You know the one: the “way less important or talented than he believes himself to be guy who talks very loudly” character. The one he ALWAYS plays. And by the time Step Brothers came out, I found myself thinking “I don’t want to go see Will Ferrell come up with the funniest combination of words he can think of and then yell them… Again. I’ve seen that before.” But that’s not what this was. This was thought out. It was deliberate, well crafted, and smart. It was also very, very funny. And even though it’s not all that different from what we’ve seen Will Ferrell do, it was an outright treat. Will Ferrell’s Dubya is so good because Dubya is a lot like those other characters. He has the same smug arrogance peppered with utter stupidity that Ron Burgundy or Ricky Bobby has. What Will Ferrell can do, because he’s Will Ferrell, is to bring those alarming comparisons into strict focus, and (more importantly) to that remind us that WE LET HIM GET AWAY WITH IT ALL. We made Ricky Bobby our president. We elected Ron Burgundy for a second term. Ferrell doesn’t want you to spend an hour and a half laughing at “strategery” or “miss-underestimate.” He doesn’t even want you to spend the full hour and a half laughing. He actually wants you in there thinking. Thinking about what we allowed one man and his administration to do to our country and the world. It’s a sophisticated show that will only become more so as it continues to develop in the month to come. My hat is off to you, Mr. Ferrell. I may have been tricked, but I’ve also been suitably impressed.