'Tail!Spin!' Finds Humor In String Of Political Infidelities

'Tail!Spin!' — a play that chronicles the lives of politicians whose personal infidelities ruined their careers — debuts today off Broadway.

Playwright Mario Correa recreates the stories of Mark Foley, Mark Sanford, Larry Craig and Anthony Weiner by arranging — word for word — the text messages, tweets and police reports that brought these men down.

“Every single word in the play—bar none—was actually uttered, tweeted, texted, or even sung by one of these four scandalized politicians.” Correa told Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson.

Rachel Dratch, the Saturday Night Live actress known for her role as Debbie Downer, plays every female part in the play.

“Every time a mistress comes in it’s Rachel, every time a wife comes in it’s Rachel, every time Barbara Walters comes in it’s Rachel," Correa said. "It’s partly because all these women were so expendable in the lives of these politicians."

While the production deals with painful personal dramas, Correa finds a way to highlight the humor inherent in the political drama.

“We laugh because it is so sad that people in the public eye do this kind of stuff,” Correa said. “The case of these guys is interesting because they took such immense risks in their personal lives and were  often — many of them in the show — big moralizers externally and then doing something else internally. And they did these things because they thought the rules didn’t apply to them.”