By Rick Manning
The producers of the Gosnell movie and Fracknation, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinny have done it again with a one-night in Washington D.C. play, “FBI Lovebirds: Undercovers” taken completely from the texts and Congressional testimony of infamous FBI paramours Peter Stzok and Lisa Page.
Dean Cain (television’s Superman) and Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer – movie) play Strzok and Page respectively in a production which had the D.C. crowd roaring with laughter.
However, it wasn’t McAleer’s clever writing, but instead as Dean Cain noted, “I’m playing Peter Strzok written by Peter Strzok” and that is where the genius of the production lies.
Cain and Swanson play off of one another perfectly as they read the lines directly from the script books and the results showed the amorous, married to others, duo to be consumed with stopping Donald Trump as they were working knee deep in the Clinton e-mail investigation and then launching the FBI actions designed to undermine Trump.
McAleer used public testimony by both Strzok and Page to bring meaning to the obvious, yet denied texts. A particularly hilarious scene featuring an unnamed Congressman (it was House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte) asking Strzok about an August 26, 2016, text to Page where he typed, ‘Just went to a Southern Virginia Walmart. I could smell the Trump support.’ And smell is in capital letters, all capital letters. What does Trump support smell like Mr. Strzok?”
While Strzok sought to dodge the question, the reality that McAleer was driving home in the sequence is the complete loathing and condescension that the former top FBI counterintelligence officer and Page who was a top attorney for Deputy Director Andrew ‘Andy’ McCabe had for rural Trump voters.
But the one act play was not only about politics, it was also a love story chronicled in text, going from almost pre-teen puppy love to the final, “Please don’t ever text me again.”
Cain and Swanson put real meat and bones on the two protagonists in the play going from playful and flirty to vain to crestfallen.
The play made news in the days leading up to its performance as its original venue backed out, increasing the cost of its production by more than $20,000. McAleer made an appeal to the audience to go to the website: www.FBILovebirds.com to get to the Indiegogo page to make a donation to meet the goal.
While the live production may have been a one-time, glorious experience, it was recorded from multiple angles as a DVD is being created for distribution to supporters of the project.
As a side note, the morning following the play, I was at a meeting with others who had been attendance, and we could not stop talking about it. If Strzok and Page had been Republicans in a GOP Administration, the McAleer production would be running on Broadway and be a runaway hit.
But the good news is that these types of independent avante garde productions can exist if the people will support them financially – they just won’t get mentioned by the woke Tony crowd. And that’s okay, after all, they smell like Bernie supporters.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
