Photo by Jason Sanders
This past Friday evening, a group of friends and I braved the cold to check out Gross National Product’s production of the The Sound of Palin at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Walking into the sold out house of the theatre, none of us really knew what to expect, but what we did hope for was plenty of chuckles.
The lights dimmed and projected on the screen was the famous opening mountain scene from the beloved musical “ The Sound of Music.” The music started and Christine Thompson ,who played the lead as Sarah Palin, came dancing on to the stage with a red suit and those trademark glasses singing “ The hills are alive with the sound of Palin…” The song was parody of the original with lyrics of how Palin was going to use her “mavericky” skills to take over the White House.
The first portion of the play was a brief synopsis of Palin’s time as mayor of Wasilla, governor of Alaska, as John McCain’s running mate and how she managed to turn her 5 minutes of fame into a never ending fascination, from her book to her TLC show “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” Each scene had a parody of a song from the sound of music. My favorite of these was the song “How do You Solve a Problem Like Our Sarah” as John McCain’s team discovered the poor choice or a VP candidate. In the first half there were plenty of chuckles and giggles. It ended with a message that we’d return to The Sound of Palin after a message from our sponsors.
This “commercial” part of the performance was the majority of the production. The skits ranged from political satires about the Tea Party and the new Republican Congress to improv skits with audience participation. Though I found a lot of the short skits to be entertaining, some of them I found to be less so and a few I had a hard time figuring out how they fit into the political satire theme. This part of the performance was the majority of the play, and seemed to be quite lengthy. However, the cast was very talented and showed their talent in the improv scenes and lots of laughter filled the house.
The Sound of Palin returned to conclude the show with the scenario of Sarah Palin and her family taking over the White House in 2013. The family was shown attending a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans-gendered convention with Todd Palin singing a parody of “Edelweiss” that was a mock of his views on the topic. The show concluded with Sarah and Todd’s children joining them on stage for a recondition of “Farewell, Goodnight.”
After the show, my friends and I headed over to Fruit Bat for rum, pineapple and cardamom cocktails to discuss the play. As we chatted, we came to the agreement that we did find it entertaining, though at times it did seem to be a little disjointed. We also came to the conclusion that something like this could only be appreciated in DC.
The Sound of Palin is playing on Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. until February 18 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.