Show Ferrell's frat-boy frat A Bush freshens Broadway show P Peter ter Marks The Washington Post NEW YORK Didn't we bid him adieu Its It's odd timing yanking an audience back into the presence of the old president just as the new one is getting settled in And yet from the first few minutes of Youre Welcome America A Final Night With George W. W Bush Will Vill Ferrell makes a pretty hilarious case for all of us having unfinished funny business with the 43 Mind you not all the bits in Ferrell's bag of riffs hold on to freshness Dick Cheney as dark puppet master feels like very old comedy news And freed of the constraints on Saturday Night Live the actor resorts to some really juvenile sight gags with one particularly out gross moment getting stuck uncomfortably in the memory No I wont won't give it away But few who've scrambled for their tickets to the Cort Coil Theatre where the minute 90 show opened Thursday are going to remember the intermittent waning of inspired satire or orthe orthe orthe the moments when Youre Welcome America re-re- re recycles patented standup material What they'll take away is the gleeful adolescent spirit of Ferrell enlarging on the swaggering r L L frat boy irai ual caricature he ne m developed for television and which he now turns into a full-fledged full comic character The show which HBO plans to run as a live telecast next month supposes Bush has been dropped literally literally on on Broadway to as Ferrell puts it celebrate my eight years of service to you The underlying irony of course is that having left office with dismal poll numbers and the nation on the verge of economic surrender he actually could be in the mood to celebrate is the satirical hook that Ferrell clings to as his Bush gazing at us in good- good 01 boy ol boy fashion with arms anns bowed like a stiff-jointed stiff gunslinger takes us down presidential memory lane With the aid of overhead projections and the appearance of one very sexy lady impersonating a close Bush adviser whose name will not be divulged here the president tries to get in the last word on everything from the heck of a job Brownie did to Mission Accomplished Hes He's gracious enough too to acknowledge his successor Im a fan of the Tiger Woods guy Bush Ferrell declares Hes a great speechmaker But tonight is about me Ferrell Terrell is not a professional mimic in such movies as the deliciously anarchic Anchorman The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Blades of Glory hes he's I joyously unhinged if often in the same intense way His impression of Bush has never been a perfect physical re-creation re or as vocally vivid as say Dana Carvey's take on Bushs Bush's father Ferrell's W. W is more about attitude and carriage Those attributes convey to the stage where he remains in character for the entire time Hes He's more satisfying as a George W. W of the imagination than the flesh and this might be why the very best sequences of Youre Welcome America occur at some remove from the kinds of Bush behavior lampooned on on Letterman and The Daily Show Yes his Bush does have funny responses at the ready when a photograph of former fonner Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta appears in a Cabinet- Cabinet member retrospective I dont don't know who that guy is Bush says And the timings timing's right when he pays tribute to a coalition of the willing member the Solomon Islands who joined the coalition without regard for the fact that they didn't have an army anny But Ferrell is better when reality begins to unravel when the comic Captor actor steers rs toward and the material goes a little er feral In a segment of Youre Welcome America that takes us to the weekend ranch in Crawford Texas T- T 11 6 Ferrell purports to lu 10 recount an outing on the property that Bush took with his father and brothers which ended with them all trapped in an abandoned mine shaft When Bushs Bush's father learns that the son had given no forethought to the danger had not considered making provisions in case case things went wrong the elder Bush in Ws W.'s wounded telling unleashes a string of hilarious epithets There is of course a wonderful parallel hinted at here in how some view the younger Bushs Bush's handling of larger crises The tirade ends with the father expressing what the nation has long wondered Why are you the only one in inthe inthe inthe the family who speaks in a Texas accent And Ferrell adds to the story a brilliant bizarre kicker one that triggers one of the biggest laughs of the night On the other hand Ferrell proves to be a master of impromptu banter in one of his concluding gambits his Bush spontaneously confers nicknames on members of the audience At my performance the thelast thelast thelast last of these was a man who called out that he was a aWall aWall aWall Wall Street trader Ferrell's sublime response created the illusion of a president a alot alot alot lot quicker on his feet than the comedian would ever have given hint him credit for a 1 f |