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Regional Reviews: St. Louis POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive Also see Richard's review of Billy Lemp Tonight
Selina Fillinger's hundred-minute comedy (with intermission) turns smart, ambitious women into raving maniacs in service of a larger-than-life president. In this fictional tale, an unseen commander in chief triggers an international incident, whilst suffering from an anal fissure. And, blossoming forth from all of that, we are once again reminded of the healing power of just shrieking aloud with laughter. POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive debuted in 2022 at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway, running for about four and a half months, including previews, and earning three Tony nominations. It's directed for Tesseract Theatre Company by Jessica Winingham, with perfect intensity and absurdity, at the Kranzberg Arts Center in the midtown arts district. But the fact of the matter is that great actresses can also turn something as simple as farce into shocking self-examination, even at a breakneck pace. In this case, we have three: Kelly Schnider plays Harriet, the White House chief of staff; Sarajane Clark is the press secretary, Jean; and Kimmie Kidd rounds the stunning triumvirate as the first lady, Margaret. The dead-on honesty of their Method acting merges with pure comic madness. And there are many quick-as-lightning moments of "why are we doing this?" swarming like yellow jackets as the pace quickens. You shriek a bit, because it all goes out of control so beautifully, thanks to director Winingham. They're doing it because they've become trapped in a world of ceremony and scheduling, where everything's always falling apart. And this time there's a clueless hooker on the loose in the West Wing, and (eventually) a dead body to conceal. A wild nightmarish quality emerges in act two after the president's errant sibling pops in for an official pardon, and his White House office secretary gets tweaked-out on drugs. They're all well meaning, but each in entirely different, and often wildly opposing, ways. Angelia Prather is wonderful as the president's outrageous sister, and Angela Jean Hetz delightful as his secretary. Every actress on stage has the well-deserved confidence of a card player who's just turned over four aces. Isa Davis is excellent as Dusty, a sex worker who has somehow jumped the fence. And everything in the fast-paced story becomes another crazy source of scandal, impossible to contain. There are some very firm rules about farce, of course, including a dead body, the threat of utter ruin, and lots of slamming doors. And typically a boy and a girl. But in this case the slamming doors are all metaphorical: they are slamming doors of broad slogans, illusions and half-truths, banged shut against each new crisis, to keep them all in power. Laurell Renea Costello plays a White House reporter whose stealth and determination led her to the center of it all. But she too succumbs to the insanity of the moment, unleashing the fury of a modern Black woman, when her own position is threatened. And the perfect explosion of her tirade draws an ovation from the audience. At the center of it all are Ms. Schnider (who reminds us of the current Chief of Staff Susie Wiles) and Ms. Clark, who shows an unexpected wealth of awesome comic vulnerability here. And Ms. Kidd, who stares it all down with an eerie, invisible air of calculation, reeling out an almost impossibly flat sense of pride, and grim horror, at a day gone totally wrong. But their fearlessness (in performance), as they go flying straight into the perilous abyss, makes it all come out all right. POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, a Tesseract Theatre Company production, runs through June 1, 2025, at the Kranzberg Arts Center, 501 N. Grand Avenue, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.tesseracttheatreco.org. Cast: Production Staff: |
