Steps bring laughter to MCA

Waves of laughter washed over the Maine Center for the Arts on Monday night as the satirical group the Capitol Steps skewered everyone from Tipper Gore to Monica Lewinsky. Not even Maine’s chief executive, relaxing in the audience with his wife, Mary Herman, escaped the quintet’s poison darts.

Bidding farewell to the Class of 2000, one woman performer, clad in a cap and gown, quipped, “Twenty years from now, you’re going to ask: Why did I pierce my tongue?

Why did I tattoo someone’s name on my butt? And who is Angus King?”

The bawdy gags about U.S. politicians, Third World dictators and Clinton’s philandering didn’t seem to offend the mature audience of nearly 1,200. For close to two hours, Jan Johns, Toby Blackwell, Janet Davidson Gordon, Michael Forrest and Toby Kempel, accompanied by pianist Dave Kane, sang, wisecracked and cavorted their way across the stage.

Thanks to impeccable timing, clever costumes and brilliant writing, the group, famous for their quarterly specials on National Public Radio, drew howls of laughter from the audience. Most of the material seemed as fresh as the evening news. The only familiar routine seemed to be the hilarious “Lirty Dies,” in which consonants are swapped in a walk through the “Sentieth Twentury.”

“K.F.J.” was “rumping like a habit” and “Lonica Mooinsky” was “pelivering a dizza, when she thashed her flong.”

During one routine, a ringer for woodenlike Al Gore was wheeled onstage on a hand truck; in another, Bob Dylan in tie-dyes crooned, “How does it feel? To have a cellular phone? In a colonial home?”

Most of the humor was right on the money. Even the occasional lame joke lampooning Richard Simmons or Slobodan Milosevic was soon forgotten as another one spilled over the footlights. I did wonder, though, why the actor impersonating George W. Bush wore steel-rimmed glasses, and why former President Bush’s delivery sounded exactly like Dana Carvey doing George Herbert Walker Bush.

And while Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton and other pols and their wives were sent up, where was daughter Chelsea? Her photograph appeared in the group’s promotional photo.

Most of the Capitol Steps actors are Capitol Hill alumni, some Republican, some Democrat, some on the fence. Actually the 30 or so cast members split up and tour the country in groups no larger than five.

Their act was born in 1981 at a Christmas party in the office of former Sen. Charles Percy. Some staff members were asked to perform a nativity scene, but said they had trouble finding three wise men and a virgin in the Senate. Oh, well.

Their shows remind me of a bumper sticker that reads, “I’m not prejudiced … I hate everybody.” Change “hate” to “satirize” and you’ve captured the essence of the Capitol Steps’ nonpartisan popularity.

Catch them on their Web site, www.capsteps.com, or the next time they play your college campus. Soon, they’ll have a Bush or a Gore to kick around, and Wick Slillie, better known as Clill Binton, will live only on some of their 20 albums, available on compact disc and cassette tape, which cast members hawked in the lobby during intermission and after their spirited performance.

Laughter really is the best medicine.