BIG DEAL
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But now junk bonds have proved more junk than bond, overleveraged companies are reeling under the weight of (would you believe it!) too much debt, and the Reagan recovery looks more and more like a lavish party to which most of us weren’t invited but that we’ll be paying for for the rest of our lives. So it’s not surprising that comedy has taken a bitter turn. Jay Leno gets in shots at Bush no one would have dared to take at Reagan. And Roseanne and The Simpsons reveal the meaner aspects of life in debt-ridden America, the ones no one wanted to see five years ago.
However, on the fringes, among the still-undiscovered comics (who have little to lose) and the tiny theaters (which have even less at stake), this bitter, alienated comedy is coming to its fullest flower. Take Steve Heller and Dick Sparks’s Big Deal, for instance. This vicious but often funny musical parody of Cinderella, set in deepest, darkest corporate America, gives full vent to a seething anger and resentment that would have been considered inappropriate in Reagan’s America.
Which makes me look forward to Steve Heller and Dick Sparks’s next effort. As the S and L crisis continues to widen and the economy slows to a trickle, we may need a lot more of Heller and Sparks’s brand of clear-eyed comedy–to keep us from lapsing into 80s-style narcosis and denial.
