Shows: Mainstage

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"GET YOUR WAR ON"
By Jenny Sandman
CurtainUp.com
January 12, 2007

Rude Mechanicals' Get Your War On, the latest creation from Austin, TX-based theatre troupe Rude Mechanicals last appearing in New York via Lipstick Traces. In Get Your War On, they've, is one of the smartest and funniest plays I've seen in a long time. Seriously. Go out and buy a ticket right now.

You'd think that plays about how stupid George W. Bush is and how pointless the war in Iraq is would be old hat by now — or at least not funny anymore. But this piece is fresh, edgy, and just tongue-in-cheek enough to pull it off. Rather than focusing on all the political mistakes of the last six years, the show merely touches on them and moves on, weaving them into a frenetic and hilarious send-up of both the Bush administration and politics in general.

Get Your War On is based on David Rees' satiric comic strip of the same name which became an internet sensation and now appears in Rolling Stone. The Rude Mechanicals stage version takes sarcasm to a new art. If these guys took themselves and their observations seriously, the play would be little more than a civics lesson. Fortunately for us, they're better than that.

With five actors, five old-school overhead projectors, and a North Korea costume, the show touches on everything from 9/11 to Lux Luthor to Voltron to Halliburton to political readings of Sunday morning cartoons. It's incredibly literate, very sardonic, and after I stopped laughing I wanted to beat my head against a wall. Conservative Republicans and people easily frustrated by ineptitude should probably avoid this show. Everyone else, see it before it leaves town.