Most of the scene is devoted to Laura Bush's buildup to reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," a book she once told a New York Times reporter was her favorite (and which provides the play's title). Along the way she refers to her husband as "Bushy" and "the chimp," rags on Lynn Cheney, complains that "Catholics are so friggin' touchy" and nails John Ashcroft.

"Just between us? Creepy," she says of the attorney general.

She becomes unhinged as she recounts the ways her eyes sometime blur and unblur when deciding whether to root for the Grand Inquisitor or Jesus in her favorite chapter in Karamazov, and whether to root for the triumph of authority or for individual freedom. In the end, a defeated-seeming Laura Bush appears to side with the Inquisitor by saying, in an allusion to the book: "I adhere to my ideas."

As the scene ended to the strains of "Desperado," the audience exploded in applause.

But the actors didn't leave the stage. Instead, Clarkson and Mitchell switched seats and, with Johnston, read a second scene, written by Kushner just that morning. "We got it like an hour ago, so be gentle," Johnston warned.

In the second piece, Clarkson took over the role of Laura Bush and Mitchell played Kushner himself, explaining in character how he'd taken his time completing "Only We Who Guard the Mystery ..." because he'd been "hoping that in three months, the play's subject matter will have exceeded the play's expiration date and returned to Crawford [Texas]."

Most of this second scene involved a sharper-tongued and more observant Laura Bush confronting a slightly defensive Kushner about the first scene.

"I didn't like your skit. It was sort of insulting and I felt like at times the writing was really muddle-headed," said Laura Bush. "I'm nothing like that." Then, eyeing Mitchell with distaste, declared: "You got a drag queen to play me!"

Kushner (again, played by Mitchell) took offense: "John Cameron Mitchell is an established and highly respected stage actor ... and he's not a drag queen. He's a female illusionist."

Later, Kushner explains his fascination with Laura to Laura: "We're all like you!" he exclaims. "We're all getting fucked by your husband!"

Laura Bush calls John Kerry that "gloomy old banana-face you just nominated," and when Kushner protests that the Democrats don't attack countries, she spits out, "No, you all just fire a missile here and a missile there and look like you're thinking real hard about the meaning of missiles."

Johnston soon chimed in (as Kristen Johnston, we're pretty sure) trading Beatrice's lines from "Much Ado About Nothing" (in which Johnston is currently appearing in Central Park) with Laura with such rapidity and passion that at one point Clarkson joyfully spun round in her swivel chair.

The dizzying jumble of genres and allusions earned a huge standing ovation for Kushner, the playwright, who soon took the stage with MoveOn organizer Laura Dawn. The cast reclined on the set for what seemed likely to be an adoring -- if not sycophantic -- question session. A devilish Clarkson even suggested skipping it and heading straight for the bar upstairs.

But when someone asked what MoveOn had planned for the Republican National Convention, things got very tense very quickly.

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