Arts Listings

Greg Brockbank, who plays Dick Cheney in By George, It’s War!, composer Dale Polissar’s new satirical musical comedy about the Bush administration, says he tries to put a “tough, Republican look” on his face while swinging his golf club in the Bohemian Grove during the number “The Republican Men’s Chorus” as the group sings, “We’re just hard-working, regular guys trying to make an honest buck; and if we have to poke our fingers in a few people’s eyes, and cut a few throats, what the fuck?” 

The “Republicans” repeat the last three words in a melodious barbershop-style arpeggio. 

It’s all part of the fun in the spoof, which lampoons the Bush administration and protests the Iraq war with music ranging from lively numbers reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan to forboding pieces evocative of Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht. A one-act version of the show of the same name played in Marin in 2004. 

Now Polissar, who wrote both music and lyrics, has added a second act covering Bush’s re-election and the war. The production opens Sunday, Oct. 14 at La Peña in Berkeley, where it plays four shows before moving to Mill Valley’s 142 Throckmorton Theatre. 

With a cast of eight, a three-person band and choreography by Doree Clark, who also co-directed, the musical review takes potshots at everything from the administration’s stance on gay marriage—“When persons of similar gender, start acting all loving and tender, it’s a fearful sight to see; it portends the destruction of society! … Parents plastered nightly on martinis, better by far than if parents both have weenies”—to what Polissar believes was the stealing of the election: “Democracy is well and good, but people aren’t too bright, so on election night, the poor dear people need my skill to make it come out right,” sings a computer-geek “wizard,” flanked by two showgirls displaying graphs of election results that change whenever he waves his computer-mouse wand.  

Ernest Bottarini plays the wizard to hilarious effect, as well as a character named “Mohammed bin Gone-A-Lot,” modeled after former Bush-administration adviser Ahmed Chalabi (who’s “been gone” from Iraq for years). In “No Problem,” Mohammed—or “Mo,” as Bush nicknames him—informs the president and a couple of generals that conquering Iraq will be “a piece of cake”: “If you invade Iraq, no problem! They soon all eat Big Mac, no problem!” he intones, all smiles, to an oom-pah-pah accompaniment as the generals stand by, nodding solemnly.  

Bush is played as a bumbling fool by Charlie Morgan. “It’s a way to respond to the corruption of this administration,” he says about the production and his role. In one of the show’s funniest scenes, Bush and Cheney eavesdrop on a pair of unsuspecting lovers whose phones they have tapped. Cheney wears a cast on his leg from a hunting accident and is tethered to an oxygen tank.  

“Y’know, some people say I don’t listen to the people,” Bush says, donning headphones. “Why, listening to the people is one of my favorite things to do!” 

The lovers are in the middle of sexy bedroom talk when Osama bin Laden comes on the line: it turns out the hunted Al Queda terrorist has, all this time, been working as a sous-chef in the White House kitchen and he has been eavesdropping on Bush: “I must say, that call you made to Dick last Wednesday about the FBI director…,” he begins. He also advises Bush to spice up the White House food with a little curry. 

Polissar, 69, is a San Francisco native and Bolinas resident whose music has been performed around the Bay Area, including at the Exploratorium and on KPFA. He plays jazz clarinet at Marin restaurants, used to write poetry, and was once a reporter for the Lodi News Sentinel, where he wrote an exposé of the bracero system that got read into the congressional record. He holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in music composition from Stanford.  

A bit of a Luddite, Polissar owns no computer: He typed the script of the show on a typewriter and wrote out the piano score the old-fashioned way—by hand. He says songs, complete with words, often pop into his head as he walks along the beach. His inspiration for the second act came from Bush’s re-election. “I didn’t think he won,” Polissar says. When the pundits said people voted on the basis of moral values, the bouncy tune “Moral Values” (“we got more moral values than you”) came to him, and the rest of the act flowed from there. He has spent the past couple of years arranging the tunes and staging the show. 

Brockbank (Cheney and other characters), a San Rafael lawyer with a theater background who is chairman of the Marin Democratic Central Committee, former chairman of the Marin chapter of the ACLU and currently running for a seat on the San Rafael city council, says he’d love to see the show sweep the country.  

“It’s important to let the world know, hey, this guy [Bush] is the greatest buffoon, and one of the greatest threats to world peace, in history,” he says. “Sometimes I struggle to decide whether it’s [the show is] an entertainment event that’s also about politics, or a political event that’s also entertaining. I think the composer is coming from both places. He’s a serious professional musician and he is seriously into politics. The way he works, every word, every phrase is very carefully and cleverly done.”  

Cast member Sandi Rubay, like the rest of the ensemble, plays various roles in the production. (Tim Mayer, Melody Ferris, Molly Maguire and Rana Kanges-Kent, also currently working in the musical “Shopping” in San Francisco, complete the cast.) “He’s passionate,” Rubay says of Polissar. “He’s just this old hippy from Bolinas who has something to say. I think he’s brilliant.”  

Polissar likes to point out that his show is more than a light satire. “It also has some deep affirmation of the beauty of the world we stand to lose,” he says. Indeed, the show ends with a moving, lyrical ensemble number, “This World”: “This world, with its flashing waters, this world, with its flaming sun … All that we need is here. We’re given paradise.” 

It’s a tearjerker. And there are dark scenes—soldiers in their bunker bemoaning the killing of an Iraqi family and war protest numbers.  

But the show’s real power may lie in the cathartic release it provides its audience through its mirthful, unrestrained swipes at George W. and company.