Theater Review: 'red Hot Patriot’: Kathleen Turner Celebrates Molly Ivins

The next time I tell you someone named Bush should not be president,” Molly Ivins advises the audience at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, “please pay attention. Most of the words are by Ivins, and they had the audience roaring with laughter at Tuesday’s opening of the short piece by twin-sister journalists Margaret and Allison Engel. A mysterious Associated Press Telex delivers occasional old columns to spur her memory. Turner — a solid presence in blue denim work shirt, jeans and flaming red hair — delivers her lines with a half-gracious, half-defiant Texas twang and timing that makes the wit land with comic precision. A generous collection of family and other photos anchor parts of this outline, in projections designed by Maya Ciarrocchi. A period photo of an old newsroom is cited as evidence of the men’s-club atmosphere that prevailed, but beyond mentions of a few woefully sexist wisecracks, we learn little of how that played out. Even the delicious barbs excerpted from her columns come for the most part stripped of her gift for anecdotes that would add context. Ivins tells us that she and Shrub grew up in the same “social circle,” but we learn nothing about its politics and attitudes beyond vague inferences.