Robert Wuhl Brings "Assume The Position" Stand-Up Special to UCPAC

Arliss finally returned home.

Robert Wuhl, who grew up in nearby Union and played sports agent Arliss Michaels on the comedy series Arli$$, brought his theater tour based on the HBO comedy special of the same name to the Performing Arts Center in Rahway, as the Union County Freeholders declared the day Robert Wuhl Day in Union County.

In “Assume the Position,” Wuhl takes the audience through “the stories that made up America, and the stories America made up.” 

It’s a humorous slant on American history, with Wuhl introducing, in a very teacherly fashion, a number of points about history – that history is popular culture, that history is based on a true story, etc – to delve into popular stories of our country.  He uses these points to bring to light stories that most of us have grown up with and taken as fact that are perhaps embellished, or even entirely false.

Wuhl introduces the famed story of the man who rode hundreds of miles on horseback to warn the colonists of Massachusetts about the movements of the British army.  You know the guy.

Or do you?  It’s the story of good old Israel Bissell, who Wuhl explains couldn’t be immortalized in a Longfellow poem because his name “sounds like a Jewish vacuum cleaner.”  Longfellow chose Paul Revere, who did indeed ride that night – for 19 miles, to Cambridge, Massachusetts.  “The only guy he could have warned was the Dean of Harvard,” joked Wuhl.

Throughout the hour-and-a-half long show, Wuhl introduces personal moments not seen during his HBO specials, including his first television appearance, as a contestant on the $10,000 Pyramid game show – an amusing moment made suddenly somber by the revelation that his father, a produce distributor, died the night the show aired on television.

These personal tales add a welcomed layer to the show, which recycles the same jokes and stories as the original HBO specials in 2006 and 2007, updated slightly for changes in popular culture (references to Britney Spears, for example, are now accompanied by references to Lady Gaga as well). 

Just because you may have heard the jokes before does not make the material any less funny, however.  The lines that went over best on television still have the same intelligent bite to them (for example, on the US Constitution: “A ‘more perfect’ union?  You’re either perfect or you’re not.  So right off the bat, our country’s based on a grammatical…[uh, let's just say mistake]”).   Wuhl takes the role of a subversive high school history teacher in “Assume the Position,” and it’s a role it’s apparent that he is quite comfortable in.

During a brief question-and-answer session following the show, Wuhl was asked how long it took him to do the research for his material.  His response?  “I made it all up.”  Is this true?  Probably not.  Does it matter?  Not really.

After all, as Wuhl says at least a half-dozen times throughout the show (quoting from the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), “…when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”