POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive
Opening Night: April 27, 2022
Theater: Shubert Theatre
Website: potusbway.com
One 4-letter word is about to rock 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. When the President unwittingly spins a PR nightmare into a global crisis, the seven brilliant and beleaguered women he relies upon most will risk life, liberty, and the pursuit of sanity to keep the Commander in Chief out of trouble.
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April 27, 2022
As a farce, “POTUS” still plays by old and almost definitionally male rules; farce is built on tropes of domination and violence. On the other hand, and more happily, “POTUS” lets us experience the double-bind of exceptional women unmediated by the men who depend on their complicity.
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April 27, 2022
But POTUS works overall: It just wants to be funny, and it is, and that’s a pleasure. Today’s body politic is riddled with sores. I can’t say for certain that laughter is the best medicine for that, but it sure is a welcome palliative.
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April 27, 2022
If POTUS, directed by Susan Stroman and opening today at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre, never quite rises to the level of those three influences – not as darkly clever as VEEP, as lightning quick as Noises Off nor as go-for-deliriously-broke as Ludlam – POTUS barrels through its weaker stretches on the contagious enthusiasm and in-it-together vivacity of a crowd-pleasing cast.
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April 27, 2022
It’s fitting that Stroman should direct Selina Fillinger’s new comedy, “POTUS,” which opened Wednesday at the Shubert Theatre. It’s a play that finds humor in suppositories, an anal abscess, dildos, scat, pus from that aforementioned abscess and a character who vomits blue puke. The blue-puke projectile happens twice, maybe three times. After that, the character just dry-heaves a lot for our amusement.
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April 27, 2022
When a cast is having this much fun, it’s impossible not to be in on it. And director Susan Stroman, a veteran of musical comedies, guides the company in making the most of each joke.
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April 27, 2022
Not that anyone needs to set an inconsequential record straight, but POTUS is a fantastic and hilarious example of a farce that doesn’t laugh at anyone in a way that dehumanizes them. On the contrary, its vision is solution-oriented—how do we fix a problem at hand—and then action-based—we should stop fixing people and run things ourselves.
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April 27, 2022
Selina Fillinger’s POTUS, (Shubert Theatre, to Aug. 14) about seven women in the backrooms of the White House trying to save the unseen male president from himself, has extremely funny, sustained moments of pan-meets-frothing-boil and then moments when the dials are turned down, and proceedings lightly simmer. These quieter stretches are not fatal—you just want the comedy to return to its delicious nuttiness; as its subtitle has it: “Or, behind every great dumbass are seven women trying to keep him alive.”
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April 27, 2022
Were it not for Stroman and her cast, POTUS would not work nearly as well as it does — honestly, I don’t think it would work at all. Never have I seen an ensemble do so much with so little, and they really come through to save the day.
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April 27, 2022
The new comedy, now playing at the Shubert, says a variety of choice words in its two hours of dialogue, but manages to keep audience members laughing for the entirety. There’s fighting, press briefings, and even a bit of ass play. How can we find more plays that showcase this level of spontaneity and vivacity? Now that’s the eternal question.
READ THE REVIEWApril 27, 2022
There’s a moment in the new Broadway play POTUS that made me cackle so loud, I surprised myself. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. It occurs as the revolving set for POTUS is turning to a new scene in a woman’s restroom. There’s a tampon dispenser, and as the lights are still down, you can see the price for tampons: $2.79. Oof. The pink tax weighs heavy on the women of the play, both literally and figuratively. If only the rest of POTUS was as subtle or as smart.
READ THE REVIEWApril 27, 2022
The premise of the knockabout piece, directed with manic but crafty intensity by Susan Stroman, is that the White House is kept afloat by a bevy of weird but individually gifted crisis counselors, all spinning like tops in a hapless attempt to get ahead of a POTUS so out of control, they all fear for democracy itself.
April 27, 2022
What will appeal to some of about Fillinger’s play — but what also holds it back — is that it’s cranked up 11 from the second the lights go up. The best farces, as well as sit-coms, start with some serene normalcy before everything goes haywire. How can we perceive this world falling apart, and laugh uncontrollably, if we never see it put-together? The non-stop high energy desensitizes by Act 2. The ending, by the way, seems like it’s trying to channel the revenge antics of “9 to 5,” however it doesn’t stick the landing.
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April 27, 2022
Performances are key in POTUS and the cast, under the direction of Susan Stroman, exceeds expectations. They deliver their lines nimbly, which keeps the play agile and appropriately tense.
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April 27, 2022
Still, POTUS makes its many effective jokes with its jaw cocked. Every now and then a woman will marvel at another woman’s brilliance and ask, “So why isn’t she president?” Darn tootin’. The best way to make such a point land, is, of course, to demonstrate womanly competence. So Fillinger, her killer cast, and director Susan Stroman go hard in scene after scene. If you laugh, they win — and they really want to win.
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April 27, 2022
The next best thing to “Veep” has arrived on Broadway, a profane West Wing comic strip of a play in which a septet of hyper-caffeinated actresses let their funny flags fly. This seven-alarm comedy goes by the demure name of “POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.” And really, the title is a lie.
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April 29, 2022
Kudos all around to Fillinger, Stroman and her whip smart creative team, and to a super-duper cast who aren’t afraid to use the c-word with all the pride and joy it deserves.
READ THE REVIEWApril 27, 2022
The underlying point of these characters is supposed to be how capable they are. More than one of them is asked, or asks herself, “Why aren’t you President?” But rather than take charge, as Jean the press secretary says to Harriet the chief of staff: “You stand in for him every single day, you’ve done it for years. You clean up his messes, you make excuses, you do his job, and then you wake up and do it all over again.” But the real message of this production is how a capable cast can let a playwright get away with almost anything.
READ THE REVIEWMay 2, 2022
It’s The Women meets House of Cards, a spot-on feminist spearing of political posturing, arrogant men, and the women who keep things running behind the scenes. The ensemble cast boasts a murderer’s row of talent, and it’s nearly impossible to choose performances to single out here.
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