Review: POTUS Delivers Gross Hilarity at Everyman Theatre

Everyman Theatre’s Artistic Director Vince Lancisi expressed it best, in his opening remarks to the audience before opening night for Everyman’s production of Selina Fillinger’s play POTUS, warning that if you have a problem with foul language, “you need to leave now.” Nobody followed Lancisi’s suggestion, and POTUS promptly made good on his warning; the first word of the play, and the last for that matter, are both one certain vulgar nickname for female genitalia. No, not the word used by former POTUS Donald Trump on the Access Hollywood tape, but, you know, the other one. And many of the hundreds of words in between those two are of a similar ilk.

If the characters spouting all this grossosity were male, there would probably be a hue and cry about their sexism and that of the playwright. But every word of the dialogue in this play is written by a woman and spoken by women. That does not keep the play from qualifying as a gross-out comedy, but it’s kind of a politically correct gross-out comedy. The point seems to be that women have earned the right to sing the blues, and hence to talk blue as well. They’ve earned these rights by devoting their lives to the mission described in the play’s subtitle: “Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying To Keep Him Alive.” They cosset him (him in this case being an unnamed president), run interference for him, try to hide and/or distract from his deficits as a leader, as a husband, and as a boss, and in the process they minimize, distort and lie outright to keep the world from understanding what a total zero this POTUS is. And this all the while they are belittled, ignored, passed over, cheated on, and sexually exploited. Naturally they feel the urge to let vulgarities fly. Who could blame them?

And before we move on from the subject of grossosity, I should add that there are all kinds of bodily fluids flowing, smeared, and being carried around, including copious amounts of vomit, a generous helping of blood, a dab of semen, and what seem like quart bottles of breast milk. And all of these, along with the language, are served up via – and are frequently the pivotal objects in – one farcical complication after another. In other words, the play never once so much as genuflects in the direction of seemliness or seriousness. Instead, it’s sort of a female Animal House.

As in Animal House, the characters evince a variety of dysfunctions, sometimes paired with comically surprising forms of competence.  The most competent of all, and hence arguably the most dysfunctional, is Margaret, the First Lady (Chinai Routté), an alum of Stanford and Harvard, an entrepreneur, a master of taekwondo, an author, etc., who, what with her regal bearing and elegant outfits (so long as one disregards the Crocs clogs), really ought to be the president herself instead of playing a ceremonial role while having to pretend not to notice when her husband is putting her down with the forbidden word we were discussing a moment ago, or engaging in Clintonesque assignations with various other women (which may possibly have saddled, so to speak, the president with an embarrassing medical condition).

At the less credentialled end of the spectrum is Dusty (Katie Kleiger), who, however, seems never to allow slights of her more lowly social standing (or for that matter the necessity of dashing out and servicing the odd Secret Service Man or two to keep them out of the room) to dent her joie de vivre, and who has no problem letting the song in her heart turn into a whole big-production-number song-and-dance routine.

Or course, if one is looking for credentials of a different sort, one could consider Bernadette (Beth Hylton), the outrageously mulletted, outrageously butch career criminal sister of the president, whose stash of drugs is powerful enough not only to fuel the disintegration of another character’s personality throughout most of the action but thereby to cause a fracas that will alter American history. But what matters most to Bernadette is securing a presidential pardon, which seems like a dicey proposition, even to someone with her combination of skills and connections.

The victim of the aforementioned overdose is Stephanie (Megan Anderson), the president’s secretary, master of five languages, who, despite her position and accomplishments, begins the play desperately trying to talk herself into developing more self-confidence. After she self-medicates from Bernadette’s stash, however all bets are off, whether they’re bets on clothing, recreational gear, coherence of speech, or for that matter, of thoughts. The drugs render the formerly mousy Stephanie an assertive, unguided missile of chaos. They may not have increased her confidence, and certainly don’t improve her competence, but they spectacularly ramp up her destructiveness.

Watching these proceedings with dismay is press secretary Jean (Tuyết Thị Phạm), who of all the characters has most thoroughly imbued the prime directive at this White House: keeping everything on the rails, or at least pretending it’s on the rails, despite the lack of meaningful cooperation from the emotional toddler for whom they play Hail to the Chief. Jean explains that one must do this day after day, go to bed, and get up and do it again.  Being a grownup in the room can be exhausting and soul-crushing.

Her foil is a Time magazine reporter named Chris (Saron Araia), on the lookout for a scoop and not particularly scrupulous about how it’s obtained. She has to be that way because her job in that highly fraught pressroom is apparently on the line, under fire from younger male competitors with both sharp elbows and the time to podcast while Chris is busy being a hyper-busy single mom.

And finally, if Margaret the First Lady is the queen, the president’s chief of staff Harriet (Deborah Hazlett in an over-the-top-unflattering coiffure) is the prime minister. She is crude, she is blunt, she is overwhelmed by all the crises that pile up on the day of the play’s action. But she is also the clearest of all the characters in her perception of the savage ironies of this male-dominated workplace, and the most authoritative in dealing with a dayful of crises.

As always in farces, it’s not so much the conclusion as the reaching of it that’s the point of the exercise: the chases, the fights, the mistakes, the unraveling lies, the physical comedy. Particularly in the second act, when certain things happen that seem seriously improbable, even in this highly-farcialized and hence implausible White House, and it becomes abundantly clear that playwright Fillinger’s command of the situation is slipping a little, it matters little. We’ve had a grand time along the way.

And we’re not the only ones. Clearly this cast is having the time of its collective life. Because Everyman maintains a repertory company, we in the audience have put in a number of years watching most of the actors. It’s undeniable that POTUS gives a number of them a chance not only to say forbidden, transgressive words out loud and get rewarded with laughs, which after all this time is probably a great kick. Beyond that, though, many of them also get to look entirely different from the versions of themselves we’ve gotten to know. The women of the Everyman troupe have been Shakespearean queens and nobles, for example, and they can all look that part. On the other hand, I can’t call to mind any previous view of any of them in fright wigs. And I’m quite certain none has ever before wandered around the set with a vacant look in her eye wearing skivvies, an inner tube and a U.S. flag. Just the sight of these respected actors casting all reserve aside along with everything else we have come to expect of them obviously creates a sugar high for performers and audience alike. A bemused tip of the hat therefore to costume designer David Burdick and Wig designer Denise O’Brien.

I should add that I enjoyed Daniel Ettinger’s set, an affair with immediately-recognizable White House columns at the side and a turntable at its heart, one that receives many a spin to plunk us in another part of the dysfunctional forest. (I gather that the same kind of arrangement was employed in the 2022 Broadway premiere of the show.)

As deliriously funny as this affront to our funnybones was, the execution wasn’t always perfect. With slapstick and farce, it helps for there to be some physical plausibility to the slaps and the pratfalls and (in this case) the barfs. Here, the stage violence didn’t sell the trompe l’oeile properly when blows clearly sailed wide of their targets. Some of the vomit was clearly coming from sources other than a character’s mouth. Characters didn’t always seem to be putting their backs behind tugs-of-war. Etc. Such things do matter. The little miscues began to accumulate, and this critic began to sense some small falling short of the play’s maximum laff-a-minute potential. At times I found myself laughing more at what was merely aspired to than at what was truly on display. Hopefully, these rough spots can be polished away, and the show’s fullest potential achieved, as the run proceeds.

Even with these tiny shortcomings, though, this is almost certainly the funniest thing you’re likely to see all year. Leave your delicate sensibilities behind and go.

POTUS: Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, by Selina Fillinger, directed by Laura Kepley, through September 29, 2024 at Everyman Theatre, 315 West Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201. Tickets $45-$92, with some pay-what-you-can seats. Extreme foul language, smoking, comic violence. Recommended for 14 and up.

Production photo: Teresa Castracane Photography.

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