It would require a spoiler alert if I quoted the first word spoken in Selina Fillinger’s POTUS, OR BEHIND EVERY GREAT DUMBASS ARE SEVEN WOMEN TRYING TO KEEP HIM ALIVE. It’s an obscenity and implies that what’s likely to follow will be at the same expanded vocabulary level.
Low-low-low level? Some would say so. Watching POTUS, however, I must report—many will agree with me— that the comedy is just about the funniest to split sides on Broadway this comedy-short season or, let’s be even more enthusiastic, any number of seasons past. At least that can be said of the 45-minute-or-so first act. The second act is a story for a much later couple of paragraphs.
For now, we’re sticking with the first act, which takes place in the White House and has Chief of Staff Harriet (Julie White) cannonading the initial expletive to inner circle and equally expletive-outfitted staff member Jean (Suzy Nakamura). They’re discombobulated because foul-mouthed POTUS has unleashed the word Harriet is repeating—or a version of it—in front of a few visiting dignitaries. Harriet and Jean need to clean things up before their chief executive-with-no-language-filter addresses a women’s group later in the day.
For those wondering which of the previous 45 POTUSes Fillinger is ribbing, the obvious choice—described pointedly in some dialog—has to be Donald J. You-know-who. Nevertheless, it could be others, too, no?
Among Fillinger’s colorful characters is Dusty (Julianna Hough), a White House newcomer newly arrived on the presidential jet and practiced at the art of fellatio as well as at various posterior services. “Are you by any chance into weird ass play?” she’s asked. Gleefully answering that she is, she’s ready to put her talents to work, even as she’s pregnant with POTUS’ child.
In a succession of scenes unfolding as set designer Beowolf Boritt’s gorgeous, generally triangular rooms turn, Flotus Margaret (Vanessa Williams) is introduced. She’s fightin’ mad but together as all get-out as she’s updated on things by staff drudge Stephanie (Rachel Dratch). This is just before an interview with White House reporter Chris (Lilli Cooper), who’s in search of a scoop and only barely realizing it’s right in front of her.
After very little time passes, Bernadette (Lea DeLaria), a convict on self-declared leave, shoulders in, wearing an eye-challenging camouflage outfit, Not only is she Harriet’s drug-dealing sister ready to ply her trade as well as Jean’s estranged lover, she’s on site to have POTUS sign her pardon. She’s not prepared to take no for an answer.
The seven sisters, as if Sabine women out for revenge, vie with one another, exponentially expanding complications. As they do, Fillinger is looking to decimate Great White Way hilarity records. (She’s likely already breaking the vulgarity glass ceiling.) As the at-sword’s-point encounters mount, they women are frustrated but hardly lost for dirty words or actions. When recriminations peak, Chris picks up a marble suffragist bust and hurls it.
A dire consequence results, the full detailing of which would require another spoiler alert. So, no spoiler-alerting here. What happens and how a truncated object is revealed in a doorway gets the first-act curtain descending to thunderous laughs. So much so that I’d wager a sense of “boffo comedy smash” is filling some audience assessments.
Then, I regret to say, the second act begins—and kinda goes nowhere. Much of it is taken up with how to handle the truncated object as it’s hauled around in a large bin. The nonplussed women—I avoid the word “hysterical”—race through Boritt’s faster-turning rooms and under Sonoyo Nishikawa’s lights while playwright Fillinger fails to hit on a genuinely workable plot.
She gets laughs from some of the situations, many calling for all actors to be present. She still flounders until after filling up another approximately 45 minutes, she lines up the cast and supplies a last black-out-inducing curtain line.
What has indisputably been established throughout both acts is that the seven cast members are each worth whatever salary they’re getting and more. Each, as cleverly dressed by Linda Cho, deserves a separate order-of-appearance rave: White for her unmitigated fury, Nakamura for her dignified uppityness, Dratch for her vague otherworldliness (especially when calling attention to her covered nipples), Williams for her dignified but no-nonsense great lady, Cooper for her sneakiness, Hough for her unabashed cheer, DeLaria for her never-abating brazenness.
Susan Stroman, apparently on leave from musicals, directs. She’s so creative at this song-and-dance-less assignment that the leave is likely to be extended. She never falters at keeping the stage lively. That goes for the stretches where the Fillinger script stalls. Yes, Stroman lovers, she does slip in a brief dance routine or two.
Back to Fillinger’s last line: Though lame-sounding as a finale, it does indicate in no uncertain words something about women power. As feminist as anything recently proclaimed, the statement insists on women as the unquestioned equal of men, equal in whatever task considered—equal surely in mastering the use of four-letter words and their longer ilk.
It’s even possible to imagine men leaving the POTUS word spray more embarrassed than women at what they’ve just heard. Isn’t that saying something about Fillinger and her mouth-y friends in today’s fragile we’re-all-equal society?
POTUS opened April 27, 2022 at the Shubert Theater and runs through August 14. Tickets and information: potusbway.com
