Politics as unusual?

June 7, 2007 | Political theater is thriving in America -- just not on our stages. Most weeknights, more than a million people tune in to Comedy Central for a satirical double act by those matinee idols Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Their brand of headline-riffing humor may not have a long shelf life (my "Indecision 2004" DVD has grown dusty), but it acts as a comic purgative to a long day's news cycle. These fake-news shows also enjoy a pedigree of politicized vaudeville (Will Rogers, Lenny Bruce, "Saturday Night Live") and, given the crude theatricality of the current administration, seldom lack for material. "[Bush] is not a very good actor," Arthur Miller noted tartly after Sept. 11. Not for nothing has Washington been called a Hollywood for ugly people.

But what does that make Broadway -- Hollywood for the powerless? When it comes to actual theater -- you know, with tickets, ushers, curtains and the whole live performance thing -- it's harder to spot a tradition of biting political commentary. That's because America doesn't have one. At a time when every aspect of life has been polarized both right and left -- when buying a red T-shirt at the Gap is supposed to fight AIDS in Africa, and SUV drivers support the troops from their bumper magnets -- mainstream drama is still content to be expensive highbrow escapism. Anyway, how can producers expect people to pay $100 a ticket to be hectored for their complacency, when attending a play is already perceived as an elitist, blue-state activity?

You can count the great 20th-century American political playwrights on one hand b

At the same time, the 2006-07 season on Broadway was remarkable for showcasing a handful of topical works. The most-heralded new play of the season was Tom Stoppard's epic about Russian pre-Revolutionary intellectuals, "The Coast of Utopia," which ended its limited engagement in May after playing to mostly full houses and getting miles of column inches in New York newspaper arts sections. There's Beltway frisson over "Frost/Nixon," Peter Morgan's cinematic retelling of the historic 1977 David Frost interviews with Richard M. Nixon. The production, which transferred from London's Donmar Warehouse, has strong word-of-mouth over its stars, Michael Sheen and Frank Langella. Earlier this season, English dramatist David Hare's thoughtful wartime drama "The Vertical Hour" weathered mixed reviews on the strength of its Hollywood cast (Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy). Although "Vertical Hour" wasn't quite the hit its producers envisioned (tickets were easy to score in the final weeks), the production earned back its $2.6 million investment.

The late August Wilson's "Radio Golf," a bittersweet study of the black bourgeoisie and its problematic relationship to African-American history, is hanging in with roughly 60 percent weekly attendance, but long-term ticket sales are lean. The play has earned respectful notices and has been drawing refreshingly diverse crowds, but it's unclear whether audiences will warm to its faintly retrograde dichotomy: black heritage vs. assimilation. At the same time, you have to be excited by Wilson's frank, profane, lyrical discussion of racial issues on a Broadway stage, when the Great White Way remains overwhelmingly, yes, white.

Several of the season's political works started life in Britain, which has a state-subsidized tradition of civic-minded dramatists that connects the history plays of Shakespeare to Shaw's drawing-room dialectics, Harold Pinter, Edward Bond, David Hare, Howard Barker and, recently, the edgy, issue-oriented dramas of Joe Penhall and Mark Ravenhill. Tom Stoppard, a postmodern pasticheur with a Shavian gift for rhetoric, is not usually listed in their company. His whimsical, nimble constructions ("Arcadia" and "The Invention of Love") toy with ideas rather than use them as weapons against the status quo. Stoppard also locates himself right of center: "I am a conservative in politics, literature, education and theater," he has said. This usually translates into a profound skepticism of idealists and moral relativists' grafting philosophy onto the chaotic messiness of life. An unapologetic Thatcherite, Stoppard is wary of abstract, totalizing theories in the public sphere. Hence the sardonic title "The Coast of Utopia," which is the only concise thing about the work.

Next page: What does Stoppard have to say about the Iraq war?