TV Reviews : ‘Capitol Steps’ Lead to Good-Natured D.C. Satire

Multiply Mark Russell by eight and you get an idea of who “The Capitol Steps” are and what they’re about, in a show that airs at 6:30 tonight on KCET Channel 28.

The troupe is a musical and comedy ensemble that satirizes some of the characters and issues streaming through Washington like perpetual works in progress that seem structurally flawed, or never quite headed anywhere.

Since they began in Washington as a group of young political staffers putting on a Christmas show for Sen. Charles Percy, Capitol Steps’ topicality and outlook have a distinct inside-the-beltway frame of reference. Their sketches are adaptations of popular songs.

There’s a collegial, musical revue fondness in their style, which is broad and cheery enough to spare them censure on the part of the political establishment--they deal in broad cartoon strokes, as, for example, when a Ronald Reagan character nods while a George Bush character sings “In the jungle, there’s been a bungle, while Reagan sleeps tonight.”

Their work lacks real sting, therefore, except in one number that suggests Dan Quayle isn’t the scariest successor to the presidency, it’s his wife Marilyn. But it does have enough point about government waste and stupidity to make you wonder what the audience, a “stellar crowd of political VIPs,” as their PR release tells us, is laughing at.