Review: POTUS by Jarrott Productions
by David Glen Robinson

 

Jarrott Productions' staging of Selina Fillinger's farce comedy POTUS is extremely well-timed for this presidential election season. Directed by the highly regarded Karen Jambon, the lavish production  takes place inside the cozy, comfortable and accommodating Trinity Street Playhouse.

 

POTUS is farce verging on slapstick,a boundary somewhat hard to define. For example: a character enters and immediately vomits into a wastebasket. You decide.

 

The play finds its edge in several offices and rooms near the Oval Office in the West Wing of the White House. There, several characters on staff, media, and family of the President of the United States (POTUS) pursue personal ambitions while experiencing great fear for their own careers and for that of the president. The first moments reveal POTUS as a virtually brain-dead philanderer happy to alienate foreign heads of state, his own party, national advocacy groups, and, specifically, all feminists. It doesn’t matter to POTUS  that all his staff and assigned journalists are women.

 

Of course, they loathe him, need him, and commit crimes to save his administration. POTUS is entirely offstage, a careening, incompetent monster who sees no need to save himself because his staff inevitably deals with all threats. His looming invisible presence over the stage is maintained by the other characters, all female. The only serious subtheme of this feminist script is that, ironically, it's all about the unseen and most powerful male on the planet, not about any of the females orbiting him—although some of their stories are well told and insightful.  

 

 

Selina Fillinger's story is too packed with spoilable surprises for this reviewer to tell more about the plot. Let's just say that the script is full of gags, so much so that cast members talk over one other’s punchlines and force feed the audience more humor than can be fully digested. Heed the language advisory on the program front page. Fillinger's assemblage of gags and tropes is grounded in stand-up comedy. Much repartee is of the put-down, sarcastic variety, with increasingly obscene epithets hurled as the stakes rise. Director Karen Jambon did a huge amount of work setting the blocking so the fast-paced lines remain sharp and clear. The competent, energetic cast hits all those marks.

 

Welcome back to Suzanne Balling as Harriet, chief of staff. Balling lost none of her acting chops during the Covid pandemic shutdown. Her physicality is nuanced and wide-ranging, and she delivers a punchline as easily with a raised eyebrow as with wide, shocked eyes. Helen Merino as the Press Secretary is a good match for Balling in snippy put-down repartee.

 

 

Kelsey Mazak applies her huge talent to explore the heights of character, and she hasn’t yet found her peak. Especially pleasing is the comes-out-of-nowhere go-go dance she performs with the secretary, Alaithia Velez, near the end of the show. The other characters tell their comedic stories through the talents of Mimi Strum, Jacqui Calloway, Oskar Brian, and Amy Minor.

 

POTUS claims not to be a political parody of any administration past or present. Program notes present it as based on “broad strokes of past presidents, combined with fever dreams of future ones.” Hmm.

 

Presidents can be hilariously funny. In this Jarrott/Jambon version of the play the stage dynamics rise in intensity almost without letup, driven by the screech of female voices toward the mass scream at the conclusion of the first act. There is little modulation of that hysteria in the second half until the relief of Mazak and Velez's go-go dance.

 

And at the end, the audience laughs its way out to the lobby.

 

POTUS is a sure winner at this election season, but it won’t instruct you how to vote. Instead, it may be happily suggesting you not vote at all.

 

The play is recommended for mature adults who don’t mind exceptionally foul language and graphic, detailed descriptions of sexual situations. Leave the kids and grandparents at home, of course.

 

POTUS

Jarrott Productions

Trinity Street Playhouse

Downtown Austin

October 17 - November 3, 2024

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POTUS
by Selina Fillinger
Jarrott Productions

October 17th through November 3rd, 2024

Trinity Street Playhouse, 901 Trinity Street, 4th floor, Austin