Steppin’ to the Bad Side
On the first Tuesday of last November, Julian Rosenblum was on the phone, talking to people in Florida and Ohio. He’d learned from a web site that these states could go either for John Kerry or George W. Bush in that day’s presidential election. And though Julian is all of eight years old, there he was on the horn, saying, “Hi, I’m a volunteer for the Kerry campaign and I’m urging you to get out and vote. Every vote counts. We need your vote.”
“He was so self-assured and poised, and though he was reading from a script, he didn’t make it sound that way,” says Julian’s father, Joshua Rosenblum. “But now and then, when he was in the middle of sentence, we’d hear his three-year-old sister Phoebe in the background adding in her two cents: ‘Bush is bad!’ ”
That, in essense, is how Bush Is Bad was born. Starting on September 15, this political revue will play every Thursday night at the Triad, with a cast led by rising musical theater star Kate Baldwin. It’s far from Rosenblum’s first foray into musical theater; he is known for writing the music and co-penning the lyrics for the 2000 Off-Broadway musical Fermat’s Last Tango (his wife, Joanne Sydney Lessner, co-wrote the lyrics and provided the book). The couple has also written the musical Einstein’s Dreams, based on the Alan Lightman novel, which will open in Lisbon later this season. “But if I weren’t a composer by trade, I’d be in politics,” says Rosenblum. “I’d love to be a guest on Crossfire — sitting on the left side.”
Bush Is Bad actually got its start last fall, when Symphony Space impersario Joel Fram called Rosenblum and asked him to contribute to a show called Political Follies. Rosenblum readily agreed, and Fram gave him two topics to musicalize. “One was about the hypocritical things you have to believe to be a Republican. So I wrote, ‘It Must Be True,’ in which people say that if that’s what George W. Bush says, then it must be true — whether it’s about right-to-life or going to war. It has among its lyrics, ‘Freedom is the good Lord’s gift to every man and woman in this nation, unless of course you criticize the president and his administration.’ ”
“The Gay Agenda” was the title of Rosenblum’s other song. He explains, “It’s a paranoid fantasy of what right-wingers think gay people want to do: Bring down the government, ruin the sanctity of marriage, and trash our values. They can’t seem to understand that all gays want is to live their lives and be left alone.” But then Rosenblum went the extra mile and set to music the famous speech that Richard Nixon gave in 1962 after losing the California gubernatorial election — you know, the one in which he stated “This is my last press conference” and, even more famously, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Says Rosenblum, “That wouldn’t be the last lie he’d tell.”
Rosenblum says that Political Follies was a great success with the audience but that he wasn’t completely thrilled with the show. “I felt it didn’t draw enough partisan blood,” he says. “They wanted to play down the ‘We-Hate-George-Bush’ angle, while I thought it was important to play it up — to mention all the preposterous things he’s been inflicting on our country since day one.” So Rosenblum got to work on writing a revue of his own, an endeavor he had to balance with his day job (he’s been commissioned to write some classical pieces) and his night job (occasionally conducting Wonderful Town on Broadway with Brooke Shields, whom he likes considerably more than he likes George W. Bush).
He spent a considerable amount of time on such websites as wwwdailykos.com, www.therudepundit.com, and www.americanpolitics.com. He also listened to Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and Al Franken. “Humor is what makes them succeed,” he says. “I’ve learned that we can’t out-shout the right wing. They’re loud, angry bullies; they don’t listen to reason and they don’t want to engage you intellectually. So our only weapon is ridicule, not a serious beating of the breast. The only way we’ll bring them down is to make them look silly.”
Of course, one of the major challenges of a topical revue is keeping the content fresh, but Rosenblum isn’t worried about that. “There seem to be fresh outrages every day,” he remarks. “Still, to be on the safe side, I tried to tackle ideological topics. For example, there’s a right-to-life number that will not go out-of-date.” Titled “The Culture of Life,” the song begins: “We believe in the rights of every fetus…up to the minute that it’s born.” Rosenblum wrote 15 more songs for the show, including, “In His Own Words”, which he describes as having “a pop anthem-ballad sound with a ‘We Are the World’ feel. The lyrics include a few — and only a few — of the many words and phrases that Bush has mangled.”
While he was working on the show, he was interrupted by several phone calls. “Mr. Rosenblum, this is the Attorney General of the United States and we’re calling to investigate you,” said the voice at the other end. Actually, these were calls from Rosenblum’s “friends,” who thought they were being laff riots. “Sometimes, I get a little nervous about what I’m doing,” Rosenblum admits. Those feelings will be reflected at the end of each performance, when the following announcement will be heard over the Triad’s sound system: “Ladies and gentlemen, Kate Baldwin, Nate Mayer, and Michael McCoy have been declared enemy combatants and will be detained by the federal government.” The cast will then sing a song titled “On Our Way to Guantanamo Bay.”
Performances of Bush Is Bad will start at 9pm, way beyond a four-year-old’s bedtime; but I’m petitioning both Rosenblums to let Phoebe stay up late at least one night to see it. She’s earned it.
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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]
