You don’t have to read the fine print for the Curious Theatre Company’s season 27 opener to know there’s going to be some tart language. The title of playwright Selina Fillinger’s breakneck comedy: “POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive” provides a hint.
Still, you might be shocked — clutch your pearls, shocked! — by the play’s first word, uttered by Harriet, POTUS’ chief of staff. It’s an unladylike word (one that Brits seem weirdly attached to). Harriet (Tara Falk) is debriefing Jean (C. Kelly Leo ), the rightly unsettled press secretary, about who was in the room when POTUS turned the word into an adjective to describe his wife’s mood.
Press secretary Jean (C. Kelly Leo, left) and chief of staff Harriet (Tara Falk, right), try to get Leslie O’Carroll’s Stephanie to find her confidence in “POTUS.” (Michael Ensminger, provided by Curious Theatre)
The Washington Post was there. CNN, too. So were several diplomats, including the prime minister of Bahrain. And, although the president didn’t see her come into the meeting, the first lady was in attendance, as well. And now Harriet and Jean are spinning.
There will be more damage to control for the duo, who do keen work at the top of a cast of characters outside the oval office that includes Margaret (Natalie Oliver-Atherton), the first lady; Stephanie (Leslie O’Carroll), POTUS’s secretary; Bernadette (MacKenzie Beyer), his wayward sister; Chris (Kristina Fountaine), a smart journalist who’s pumping sources even as she pumps breast milk; and Dusty (Rhianna DeVries), a young woman who blows into the West Wing with a neon blue slushie and news about the prez more garish than that big gulp beverage.
In the aftermath of POTUS’ vulgarity, Jean sets out to handle the press. She doesn’t have much luck since Chris is already sitting in Jean’s office angling for a better quote than the one Jean delivered at the press briefing. Harriet is busy trying to manage POTUS’s loaded calendar. (Did I mention that the president can’t sit because he has a bum bum, thanks to yet another phrase I can’t mention here.) There is a visit by twin veterans, wounded in Iraq. There’s the endorsement of an ally who is running for governor.
There is an utterly vital nuclear, non-proliferation convening. POTUS’s evening is set to end with him and the first lady attending gala for the Female Models of Leadership Council. It might be tricky trotting out a president who, as recently as that morning, referred to his wife with a misogynist epithet.
While Jean and Harriet tag team the growing disaster, Stephanie tries to keep visitors to the president at bay.
Bernadette’s unexpected arrival suggests that being randy runs in the family. Move over, Billy Carter and Roger Clinton Jr. The playwright and Beyer put a fresh spin on the sibling whose past is a threat to the president’s future
Especially challenging for Stephanie is the imperious first lady. Oliver-Atherton has a crisp cadence that brings to mind the actor Sheryl Lee Ralph. Although Stephanie speaks five languages and runs POTUS’s office, she feels herself to be no match to the other women orbiting the White House.
To get her to buck up, Harriet has given her an empowerment playlist and a series of exercises intended to make the daunted secretary bolder. When Dusty arrives “for the position,” Stephanie’s esteem plummets even further even as portrayer O’Carroll’s zaniness soars.
From left, Stephanie (Leslie O’Carroll), Dusty (Rhianna DeVries) and Chris (Kristina Fountaine) in “POTUS Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.” (Michael Ensminger, provided by Curious Theatre)
Under the direction of Curious artistic director Jada Suzanne Dixon, the actors portraying the titular septet display an ace sense of comedic timing (physical and verbal), one that nods to Molière but also to Clare Boothe Luce. Like the French playwright’s farces, “POTUS” is rife with doors slammed; entrances and departures hastily made; disasters courted and perhaps averted. And much like the latter’s arch divorce comedy, “The Women,” and its indelible 1939 big-screen adaptation, this play has an all-female cast that pulls off sometimes appallingly, acerbic observations. In this case, they’re about politics, about the guy in the oval whom the audience never sees, about each other.
Quandaries about power and the way gender works in politics abound. Chris, the journalist, is slowly being pushed out by younger male colleagues. Harriet is smarter than her employer. Margaret is sharper than her husband. While you might be tempted to hazard guesses about who POTUS is based on, the playwright offers this note about the White House setting: “Perhaps not the current administration, exactly — but broad strokes of past presidents, combined with stress dreams of future ones.”
“POTUS” is supersonic from its opening salvo. The repartee is fleet, fierce, and dang amusing. Its speed satisfies the demands of farce and then some. Apart from Harriet and Dusty’s tête-à-tête about an inconvenient pregnancy, this isn’t exactly a deep comedy so much as a wickedly clever one, fueled by a pitch-perfect ensemble. Which, oddly, feels fine.
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In comedy, timing is, if not everything, close. But don’t let the exhausting demands and outright madness of the nation’s current political theater dissuade you from a show that feels timely but also manages to offer a deftly performed, often hilarious respite from the moment. “POTUS” — or rather the women propelling it — have our vote.
Lisa Kennedy is a Denver-based freelancer specializing in theater and film.
IF YOU GO
“POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.” Written by Selina Fillinger. Directed by Jada Suzanne Dixon. Featuring Tara Falk, C. Kelly Leo, Leslie O’Carroll, Rhianna DeVries, MacKenzie Beyer, Kristina Fountaine and Natalie Oliver-Atherton. Through Oct. 13. Curious Theatre Company, 1080 Acoma St. curioustheatre.org. 303-623-0524