Let's go to a Broadway show tonight!

And the beauty of it is, we don't even have to leave our homes.

The lengthy name of the show is Will Ferrell: You're Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush. And HBO Canada will air it live -- yup, live -- from Broadway's Cort Theatre in New York.

True, in a recent column we chastised the various late-night comedians and sketch shows for their laziness in continuing to pick on Bush, who officially was replaced by Barack Obama as president of the United States in January. But we can live with it in this case for a couple of reasons.

First, this is a Broadway run that began on the day of Obama's inauguration and obviously was in the works for many months before that. And second, Ferrell just makes us laugh, and all tends to be forgiven when we're chuckling.

Ferrell recalled it was about a decade ago that he first played Bush merely as a walk-on in a Saturday Night Live sketch that centred on Bill Clinton. Bush hadn't entered the national consciousness yet, so initially Ferrell took the obvious route and played Bush as a beer-drinking, high-fiving frat dude.

"Darrell Hammond was always going to play (Al) Gore, and then Lorne Michaels (SNL show-runner) asked me if I wanted to play Bush," Ferrell said. "I thought, 'Yeah, this will be fun. I'll play him for a couple of months. He probably won't win.'

"And then it ended up not only did he eventually win, he just kept kind of gaining momentum in terms of his comedic persona."

It was both the man and the circumstances that made mocking Bush such fertile ground.

"Obviously there was some insane news events that he had to deal with and obviously some poor decisions on his part, along with his type of personality and the fact that he kind of can't speak properly," Ferrell said.

"That makes for a wonderful comedic stew. And I like to use the word 'stew' whenever I can."

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