Some Splaining To Do

In my inbox this morning, this news stuck out:

Steppenwolf Theatre said Wednesday that the actress Julianna Margulies will be the guest of honor of its annual Women in the Arts fundraising luncheon.

The star of "The Good Wife" (a CBS drama set, but not filmed, in Chicago) will be interviewed by Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey about her career. The event is slated for March 12 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph St.

Margulies is certainly worth honoring, but I have to wonder if this is all an elaborate ruse to get her in the room and ask her to account for this major Good Wife fail, from last October:

The first scene of Tuesday's episode, penned by Robert and Michelle King, was set at a fundraiser in a hotel ballroom. "And now as dinner is served," says the hostess, "Steppenwolf Theatre will entertain us with scenes from their hit play, 'The Cow With No Country.'"

Yeah, that's credible. Steppenwolf does bits of its shows in hotel ballrooms all the time. Just as the beef is served.

And with that introduction, a motley and pathetic little group of ragamuffin actors popped out, replete with their crude puppet-cow and all, and do some kind of whacked-out performance that lands somewhere between moronic Medieval drama, pantomime, Bertolt Brecht, "War Horse" and "Jack and the Beanstalk."

English accents and all. We kid you not. What has that got to do with Steppenwolf?

The Midwestern rubes were putting on a show. The fictional politicos snicker at the childishness of it all.

The obvious next move would be for members of Steppenwolf to playfully invade the Women in the Arts luncheon with a scene from The Cow With No Country. All in good fun, of course.