Kathleen Turner turns up the heat as Molly Ivins in ‘Red Hot Patriot’

Have the Democrats ever thought about swapping out Charlie Rangel for Kathleen Turner, another liberal Manhattanite — but with fewer ethics violations? Or at least installing Turner as an honorary minority whip? Because she would kick the tar out of the mewling progressive caucus in the loathed and paralyzed 112th United States Congress, whose approval rating sputters at 17 percent. What the political process needs, says Turner, are stern voices of practicality.

“I’m a shut-up-and-do-it woman,” the actress says in her rolling-thunder voice, Bacall on steroids, baritoned over the years by age and booze and chemo and cigarettes. “You think something should be done? Do it.”

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(James A. Parcell/TWP) - Kathleen Turner, 1981.

Gulp. Go on.

“One of my fears,” says Turner, 58, rumbling onward, “is that after the Republican convention — after everyone has been placated as best they can — they’re going to turn their focus to pacifying women, to telling us, ‘No, we wouldn’t actually defund Planned Parenthood and health clinics . . . and yes, you will have equal pay. Wait, honey.’ ”

She scoffs, and continues: “I want to keep women awake in September and October so that they don’t forget that this is, in fact, the Republicans’ agenda. Now, I’m not saying I can do this myself. But I can raise my voice.”

The voice.

Honey.

Let me tell you.

The voice could smite a filibuster.

The voice achieves its own quorum.

The voice is in contempt of Congress.

You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.

You know the voice. You knew it as early as 1981, when she was in that white dress, and then out of that white dress, and then suddenly William Hurt was in jail and she was on a Brazilian beach with her dead husband’s fortune, knowing she’d gotten away with murder, and it was all so damn hot.

Thirty years after “Body Heat” and she’s just as seductive, even here in the chilly lofted cafe at Arena Stage , but her lure today is not murderous lust but passion for progressive causes. She will play the late Texas columnist Molly Ivins from Aug. 23 to Oct. 28 in the one-woman show “Red Hot Patriot,” by Margaret and Allison Engel. As the general-election cycle reaches its climax, Turner, as Ivins, will inveigh against the hypocrisies of our time from a stage two miles from the White House.

“Hi, honey!” Turner says as Arena’s artistic director, Molly Smith, pops by the cafe to say hello. “I am so glad this worked out. I am so excited. Wait till you see it now. It’s swell.”

“I can’t wait,” Smith says, embracing Turner’s imposing frame. “I can’t wait.”

“We’re just going to make a helluva splash,” Turner says. “That’s my intention.”

Turner made a literal splash in her Arena Stage debut in 1981, when she did backflips into an onstage pool as Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” As for symbolic splashes, here’s a passage from the final pages of “Red Hot Patriot,” as Ivins — who was a perpetual burr in George W. Bush’s saddle — starts marshaling her audience:

These are some bad, ugly and angry times, and I am so freaked out. Hate has stolen the conversation. The poor are now voting against themselves. Politics isn’t about left and right; it’s about up and down. The few are screwing the many. Not that hard to figure out how to fix things. Stop letting big money buy our elections.