WMU Theatre recently opened its production of “POTUS.” WMUK’s Gordon Bolar has this review.
The full title of Selina Fillinger’s play promises that those attending WMU Theatre’s production are in for a no-holds-barred evening of laughter, with a decidedly feminist bent. The full title is: “POTUS, or behind every great dumbass are seven women trying to keep him alive.”
And the very first word of the play’s opening line, the four letter “C” word, suggests that much of the back-and-forth among the seven women supporting the chief executive in the Oval Office will be meant for adult audiences.
That doesn’t mean that this show depends on laugh lines relating to sexual activity, innuendoes, or cringe-worthy bodily functions. The actors in director Kate Thomsen’s rollicking farce go for casual acceptance of the otherwise shocking language and behavior, merely the wallpaper of an administration beset by bigger fish to fry.
These problems include the scandals and international brinksmanship of the [seemingly out-of-control] primary occupant of the famous Pennsylvania Avenue residence. And problem solving, GSD, or getting stuff done, as one character puts it, is what these seven women do. Bimbo eruptions, or POTUS dalliances, are one of their most frequent problems.
This production succeeds because of the breakneck speed with which the characters scramble to solve, or attempt to solve, a barrage of developments that confront them. Here the cast’s rapid-fire line delivery and overlapping dialogue help connect an eager audience with this roller-coaster- like ride. We hang on to see where the foibles and over-the-top predilections these vivid characters will lead. Their mistakes are always more fun than any success they might enjoy.
Credit here goes to movement and fight choreographer Elizabeth Terrel for the accelerated physical action that includes hilarious pratfalls, collisions, chase scenes, zany drug-crazed antics, cat fights, and hurled objects.
When one of these objects accidentally finds its mark squarely on the forehead of the President of the United States, the women quickly huddle to pool their wits, wisdom, and resources, in efforts to explain his absence from imminent events, and a barrage of questions from the press.
Chief of Staff, Harriet, played by Nadya Beyar, coolly and calmly presents a rational plan for what is needed: a bizarre, hair-brained cover up. Beyar is convincing as a wily, power-seeking. Washington insider whose proposed strategy seems sure to work-- until it doesn’t.
Her strait-laced, brow-beaten minion, Stephanie, the President’s Secretary, is played by Kate Wilen. She initially cowers in the presence of the First Lady, Margaret, a gun-toting female, long ago resigned to her husband’s indiscretions, who is portrayed in an appropriately world-weary manner by Brie Bradley.
Insert into this already chaotic landscape of pushy and paranoid personalities, the President’s sister, a decidedly butch, soon-to-be pardoned drug pusher, Bernadette. She is rendered in a deliciously dominant manner by Morgan Bodie.
With the aid of Bernadette’s mistakenly consumed mind-expanding substances, Wilen’s character, in a mad romp, undermines any vestige of problem-solving focus that her sisters in arms might have left. She also ups the ante in the stakes for the group’s attempt to rescue the Presidency and continue their professional futures on this planet.
Press secretary Jean, Laura Nguyen, admirably executes a careful balancing act between attending to the advances of former lover, Bernadette, and the bimbo eruption at hand, the vivacious Dusty. Kara Downey’s wonderfully uninhibited ditzy character is a farm girl from Iowa, recently impregnated by POTUS. To buy time, she provides song, exotic dance, and other intimate favors for waiting White House guests.
If this plot sounds complicated—well, it is. That leaves reporter Chris, played by Treasure Rose, with one of the toughest assignments in the room: deciding what portion of the ongoing mayhem she will not cover for her readers. Rose does service to her role as a text-message plagued, frantic, nursing, working mother with a delicate balancing act of her own.
Each member of this cast demonstrates commitment to and mastery of the verbal and physical comic skills required to create these seven diverse and fully developed characters.
One curious choice is staging the production in the York Arena, rather than in a proscenium environment. Although the set lacks slamming wooden doors of traditional farce to punctuate numerous exits and entrances, the cast compensates with energy and sound effects of their own. Because the audience is quite close to the action, the horizontal pictorial arrangement of seven performers spread out across the playing area, can lead to a ping-pong effect for the viewer.
While the pantomiming of invisible objects by performers was understandable in most cases, the handling of one key invisible object, a small marble bust, seemed muddy, unestablished, and difficult to follow, given its purpose in the action and plot.
Nevertheless, the initial promise of uproarious laughter and the feminine struggle to compensate for the shortcomings of men does not go unfulfilled in this sparkling production.