Stage: Politics is a joke

The Capitol Steps, who for the past quarter-century have skewered politicians, are coming to the PAC on May 15

By Josh Krane

This has been one wild campaign season. For proof, just ask the cast of the Capitol Steps.

It was only last summer that the Virginia-based comedy team’s members were licking their chops at the comedic prospect of Hillary and Bill Clinton moving back into the White House, as it seemed Sen. Hillary Clinton had all but locked up the Democratic nomination.

They were also spoofing Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani with a song called “He’s Relying on 9/11,” a parody of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” and knocking the dead-as-a-doornail candidacy of John McCain with another parody called “His Campaign is Plainly Down the Drain.”

Oh, how things have changed.

“It was working well and then all of a sudden New Hampshire came along and, ‘Whoops, it’s not down the drain,’ ” said Elaina Newport, a former legislative assistant to Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois, one of three who co-founded the Capitol Steps. “Now we’ve got to go a completely different direction. It is odd because you get a good Rudy Giuliani song and then he drops out. And then you get Mitt Romney and you think that he’s going to be the candidate, and everything rhymes with Mitt, so we liked that one.”

Keeping their jokes aligned with the ever-changing political landscape is nothing new for the Capitol Steps cast, some of whom have been making fun of Washington politicians onstage for 27 years.

When the group visits Cal Poly’s Christopher Cohan Center next Thursday, they’ll be singing a new tune about the 71-year-old McCain, who is now the Republican nominee —“When I’m 84,” a spoof of the Beatles’ “When I’m 64”—along with 29 other parodies about everyone from Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama to North Korea dictator Kim Jong-il to, of course, President George W. Bush.

In a highlight of the show, a cast member portraying Hillary Clinton performs a Shakespearean piece called “To Cry or Not to Cry,” no doubt a reference to the misty-eyed interview the New York senator gave before this January’s New Hampshire primary that some say helped save her campaign.

“It’s funny because the scene has Bill in it and even Shakespeare sounds dirty when Bill Clinton says stuff like, ‘There’s the rub,’ ” joked Newport, who remembers Bill Clinton’s presidency as “the golden years of political satire.”

Later in the show, Hillary Clinton and Obama muse about the possibility of pairing up for a “dream ticket,” singing a duet to the tune of “Ebony and Ivory” by Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, and cast members portraying U. S. Supreme Court justices sing about being old to the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.”

And what would any political satire show be without taking a few final ribs at President Bush? In a song called “The Brain-Mouth Connection,” a parody of the Muppets’ “Rainbow Connection,” President Bush laments his frustration over not being able to understand things.

“One half of the time I have to get things explained to me, the other half I have to explain things I’ve said that don’t make, you know, sense,” explains Bush, played by Jamie Zemarel, in an opening monologue. “And then the third half, that’s when I try to remember how to do math.”

Newport, along with a few other Capitol Hill staffers, formed the Capitol Steps in 1981 as something of a lark, premiering about six parodies at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee Christmas party. The show was a hit, though, and the group began getting invitations to perform at several events. A few years later, the Capitol Steps was in such demand that the cast decided to pursue the political satire show full time.

“We just didn’t know when to quit, and it kind of kept going, and then it got to the point where we were traveling and they started to notice we weren’t showing up at our day jobs as much as we should,” Newport said.

Today, the Capitol Steps has multiple shows touring across the United States. About half of the cast has worked in Washington, D. C. Is real life on the Hill as exciting as a Capitol Steps show? Not exactly, said Newport.

“We have to be careful because nobody cares about the real inside stuff,” she said. “You can’t write a song about the McCain amendment on regulatory reform. Nobody would care. So we have to stick to the headlines.”