Arena Stage has elected to turn up the heat in the late-summer/early-fall portion of its 2012-2013 season by presenting Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, starring Kathleen Turner from August 23 to October 28, 2012.
Ivins was an unashamedly populist Texas journalist who called herself a “left-libertarian”, and who relentlessly skewered local and national politicians during her forty-year career. She famously said of a Dallas Congressman that “[i]f his IQ slips any lower we’ll have to water him twice a day”, and said of Pat Buchanan’s “culture wars” speech at the 1992 Republican convention that “it probably sounded better in the original German.” Her most frequent target was former President George W. Bush, whom she called “shrub.” Ivans died in 2007 at the age of sixty-two.
Red Hot Patriot, by twin sister journalists Margaret and Allison Engel, premiered at the Philadelphia Theatre Company in 2010, where the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote “Kathleen Turner gets it right!”
Turner last performed here in 2007, when she played Martha in the touring production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at The Kennedy Center. She is a Tony and Academy Award nominee.
Single tickets are not yet available but subscribers to the 2012-2013 may obtain tickets to this show for an additional $45 by calling 202-488-3300.
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