By Darby Turnbull.
There’s a story in Gail Sheehy’s biography of Hilary Clinton about how after the public exposure of her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky she didn’t speak to him for eight months and only broke her silence when she called him to strongly advise him to begin bombing Serbia, which he did in due course. For me, this anecdote is the perfect microcosm of the Clinton years.
In 2022, 28-year-old Selina Fillinger became one of the youngest female playwrights to be produced on Broadway when POTUS was staged. A madcap farce set in the White House featuring an ensemble of incredibly smart, competent women and their increasingly erratic attempts to clean up after the dullard President of the United States. On this particular day, the unseen POTUS has started the day dropping a four-letter expletive rhyming with runt at a press conference; given what’s transpiring in the US currently this seems positively quaint; and proceeds to cause an international incident by abruptly leaving peace talks. Scrambling in his wake are his Chief of staff, press secretary, secretary, lover, TIME reporter, wife and his sister incidentally convicted for international drug smuggling whom he’s on the verge of pardoning.
The White House is a delicious setting for a farce (all those doors!), the walls positively brimming with intrigue, ambition and bureaucratic cock ups being held together with super glue. Lightning Jar and 45 Downstairs were programming this piece when the US was looking at the real possibility of electing Kamala Harris its first female BIPOC president. In a repeat of 2016, an incredibly qualified career politician lost to an ostentatious buffoon who encapsulates every vice we’ve been taught to abhor. There’s been an ongoing joke about ‘the woman behind the man’; Nancy Reagan, Jackie Kennedy, Hilary Clinton in the tabloid age, Michelle Obama in the digital age. There’s a fixation on the possibility that in the hands of a woman, democratic leadership will somehow fix itself. However, as we know women are just as capable of upholding patriarchal, imperialistic states, more so even because they often have perspectives of both sides. It’s not a quagmire that POTUS is overly invested in exploring. There’s a lot of focus on the individuals associated with the President but not what that position represents and how these women interact with their roles in maintaining it.
Fillinger dutifully pays lip service to some of the moral hypocrisy of her characters; the first lady is African American, and she’s briefly taken to task for not focusing on issues that disproportionately affect people of colour in her myriad of charity work; but a more nuanced (and funny) exploration of intersectional conflicts of identity and values is brushed aside to make way for physical shenanigans. It’s a shame because there are the seeds of a much more interesting play that examines women’s roles in upholding institutions of power and influence beyond; ‘god they’re so intelligent and qualified, why aren’t they running things?’. It’s a solid concept that could do with significant ‘punching up’; the satire needs to be sharper, nastier, bolder. Shows like Veep and Yes Prime/Minister were master classes on sending up individuals operating within and trying (and failing) to master political systems they barely understand.
At an hour and forty minutes with an unadvisable intermission the show plays like an SNL sketch that keeps running out of steam. Farce is famously difficult, at its best it has to be timed and paced with such precision that every escalation feels inevitable. If the ball ever drops the audience is reminded of the fallacy it’s built on.
The production has assembled a cast and production team to die for. Marni Mount is a particular coup as Director; one of the visionaries behind Trophy Boys (a far superior, in my opinion, comedy about ingrained misogyny). She displays considerable heft at creating a nuanced comedic energy and absurd internal logic for her production and she keeps the play moving at a breakneck pace, assisted by Sophie Woodward’s cunning set of curtains and various doors.
The cast is an embarrassment of riches with a collection of some of our most dynamic veteran and emerging performers. Candy Bowers as the First Lady simmers with acidic patronisation undercut by just how fed up she is. AYA, as the Journalist and single mother of three is a firecracker of exposed nerves, spending much of the performance either pumping or leaking breast milk they provide a masterful display of comic physicality. Hannah Greenwood is great fun as the lesbian lothario drug mule and has terrific chemistry with Lightning Jar regular Tilly Legge as her tightly wound on and off girlfriend, Legge is a marvel juggling her characters contradictions as adeptly as she juggles her cover up stories.
Carolyn Bock is a force to be reckoned with as the beleaguered Chief of Staff getting to play one of the few emotional arcs in the play and she’s an absolute knockout whether delivering droll rejoinders, near hysterical burnout or existential anguish.
Liliana Dalton as the uber competent albeit hopelessly insecure secretary starts at 10 and somehow only gets higher throughout the performance in a dynamic exhibition of neurosis that keeps you guessing as to the levels of weirdness she’ll uncover.
Finally, there’s Lucy Ansell as the Girlfriend. Like Dalton she has a gift for taking a ‘type’ and slyly subverting it with unique choices that make a rote characterisation feel fresh and dynamic. As the Iowa farm girl who’s a lot savvier than she appears, Ansell owns the stage with bright buoyancy and elastic physicality. Given how many dramas I’ve seen her (excel) in of late it was a hoot to see her let loose in a comedy.
POTUS is a well-meaning and mostly well executed farce but unfortunately can’t compete with just how absurd the state of Western Politics is and continues to be. The text feels like one of those 2017 era pink pussy hats or seasons 2-5 of The Handmaids’ Tale. Eye catching but doesn’t hold up especially well to scrutiny.
Thankfully it’s a welcome return to Lightning Jar to 45 downstairs after a long absence and an opportunity to see one of our preeminent directors lead an exceptional cast of local pros.
Image: James Reiser
