Everything seems like politics there days, at least to me. We went to the theater last night to see Ken Ludwig’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood. This show is a rather light take on the familiar Robin Hood legend. Played mostly for laughs, it featured in addition to Robin Hood himself, all of the usual suspects, Little John, Friar Tuck, and Maid Marian. It had comic allusions to both the works of Shakespeare and Monty Python’s Holy Grail. On the antagonist’s side of the coin, it’s cast included the likes of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Guy of Gisborne and Prince John.

Audience participation was encouraged with both an applause sign and on its reverse a sign for booing. Robin Hood and his Merry Men are all into helping the poor. This made them the obvious choice for the good guys. That leaves the Sheriff, et. al. the role of the bad guys. Some slapstick mistaken choices with signage only egged the audience on. A couple of asides was all it took to tie this historical struggle to the current political situation. 

Those tie-ins had less than universal appeal to the mostly white and elderly house. Maybe they were still preoccupied over their 401Ks. It is natural for all this rigmarole over tariffs to allude to the Robin Hood legend. Tariffs are a tax, effectively a regressive sales tax. If left in place these tariffs will result in a massive reverse Robin Hood scheme, stealing trillions of dollars from the poor to pay the rich. The same rich who are searching for money like this to pay for their sought-after massive tax cuts.