Playwright A.R. Gurney's M.O. is simple enough: forever associated with W.A.S.P.s and the upper levels of Northeastern society and intelligentsia, he has made a name for himself with such clever plays as The Cocktail Hour, Love Letters, and probably his most famous, The Dining Room. These parlor dramedys explore intelligent issues with humor and earnestness. If there's one criticism that can be leveled against this prolific playwright, it is that the East Coast-infused liberalism of his work makes it hard for him to play in Peoria, or Phoenix, in this case. For Gurney, politics is serious business and must be ridiculed and revered in equal measure. Rarely has politics been so much at the forefront of his plays as with one of his more recent scripts, The Fourth Wall. It is this attempt to find unity in a lunatic world that director Chris LaMont and Is What It Is Theatre have chosen to mount in their little storefront theatre, adding to the subversive nature of the piece.

Peggy, a high-minded housewife in Buffalo, has become obsessed about President Bush and theatre simultaneously. She has rearranged her and her mild-mannered husband Roger's living room to resemble a set, with all of the furniture facing a blank fourth wall. It is this fourth wall through which she hopes to connect with all of the people of the world. Her husband calls upon two people to address this problem. The first is a mutual friend from high school, the New York sophisticate Julia, and the second is Floyd, a professor from a local college theatre department. Julia has designs on Roger, while Floyd tries to convince Peggy of her parallels with Shaw's Saint Joan. Oh, and it has a score by Cole Porter! The play becomes an exploration of the inherent theatricality of life and the need for liberals to connect with the world to stop the insanity of so-called compassionate conservatism. Produced Off-Broadway in 2002, this is a wonderful script with a short fuse. That's not to say that it is quick-tempered, but doomed to obscurity with the end of this conservative regime. That's a shame, too, because the theatrical conceits of the show make it potentially ageless, but the political trappings scream of Dubbya and the Bush dynasty, which means it could have the same shelf life of the Vaugh Meader albums parodying JFK and his First Family.

LaMont has chosen to make this presentational from the start, which I think is inappropriate. This is a show that needs to start in an oddly arranged living room, and slowly move into theatricality through its effect, but instead he has Rebecca Harrison play the too haute for her own good Julia unbelievably over-the-top from the start, which makes Matthew Cary's very earnest portrayal of Roger run too quickly into a wall. Rebecca A. Siegel's Peggy is consistently underplaying throughout, desperately honest and never truly "acting," even when she struts the stage singing Porter. The initial tone tilts the setup, but by the time Keith Wick's hilarious Floyd sweeps onto the stage, completely pegging the theatre academic, the struggle between St. Joan and Anything Goes begins to level off, and the play pushes forward quickly, funnily, and thought provokingly to its madcap finish. It is only Harrison who doesn't offer a successful character arc. Wick's movement from cerebral to cognizant of baser reality is well played. Cary's everyman breaks through when called upon. Endearing, though not quite engrossing, Siegel lets the power of Peggy's realizations carry her to the conclusion.

In most theatres, the box set is a dying convention, but Is What It Is has always depended on it, and Michael Peck's set and lighting creation works well. Kathleen Brazie's choreography perfectly captures the flourishes of amateur interpretation of Porter, though the unbilled costumes, save for Wick's dead-on creation, miss on most every mark. There's a line , for example, where Floyd pegs Peggy as "a natural fiber" kind of woman, yet Siegel is wearing what appears to be polyester. John S. Jones II's sound design has shifting levels for the player piano, but is otherwise adequate.

At one point in the play, one of the character's notes that it's silly to break the fourth wall, as the only people you'll meet on the other side are the Jews, who have been keeping the theatre alive for the last fifty years or so anyway. There's more than a hint of truth to this statement. Trying to convince a theatre audience that George W. Bush is going in the wrong direction is like trying to convince a Cardinal's fan that their team is bad. Worthy thoughts are better expressed to the opposition, and that's what makes leftist plays repetitious. Whatever your leanings, though, Gurney's humor is for all, and this production has the audience laugh in all the right spots, which makes it worth attending, even if it will do little to fight the powers that be.