The question on America’s mind until Election Day — and likely immediately after as votes are counted — is one that dates back to the suffragettes: Why can’t the United States have a woman president? Handily, it’s also the query at the heart of “POTUS,” Selina Fillinger’s off-kilter look at the West Wing from an entirely female perspective, which runs at Blackfriars Theatre through Nov. 3.
Most of the story’s seven characters could do the job, a point made again and again throughout increasingly ridiculous circumstances both geopolitical (the threat of war) and personal (a presidential polyp). Fillinger gave the show the helpful subtitle “Or Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive,” and Blackfriars Theatre made the inspired decision to stage it in the lead-up to this year’s presidential election.
As such, this profane, highly explicit romp brims with even more electricity than its “Veep”-inspired DNA gives it on the page. For a show with breast-pump props, a candid discussion of abortion and an oral sex joke delivered via projectile, that’s saying quite a lot. The very first word of the play communicates precisely what it’s about. (No spoilers, but it’s vulgar!)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The First Lady, chief of staff, press secretary and staff secretary walk into a room with the president’s criminal sister, his mistress and a political reporter. The setup alone is funny. The twist that comes midway through the play makes the punchline about ten times more hilarious.
“POTUS” works largely because it’s a feminist workplace comedy in which the workplace happens to be the White House. This allows Fillinger to introduce many different kinds of women — working mothers, career-focused achievers, flax farmers — to play off each other’s differences.
The cozy Blackfriars production puts the audience in the middle of the executive branch’s claustrophobic stress, adding to the comedy (and the temperature in the theater). Thanks to zany direction by Kerry Young, the jokes live just as much in the physical performances as in the quippy, fast-paced dialogue familiar to anyone who’s seen HBO’s “Veep.”
That a few of the actors regularly tripped over that tricky dialogue can be forgiven, largely because the show is so funny, but also because the brisk pace doesn’t leave much time to linger on missteps.
As the president’s personal secretary Stephanie, the delightful Chris Woodworth spends much of the play putting on a masterclass of physical comedy, using a inflatable inner tube as a scene partner. And Abby DeVuyst — who recently lit up Rochester Fringe Fest in the Bushwhacked performances with Young — holds both the show and the performers together as the overtaxed but clear-headed press secretary Jean.
The “Veep” influence undeniably looms large, though it’s closer to creator Armando Iannucci’s 2009 predecessor “In the Loop” with its interlocking comedic blowups and general disregard for accepted social norms in the name of maintaining power. One “Veep” device used to particular success here is withholding the POTUS himself and relegating him to an offstage presence.
Thus the play’s lone male character becomes the foil he’s required to be in any given scene. By being unseen, he is everything — a philanderer with a coital injury who’d pardon his own felon sister and refer to his own wife crassly during a meeting with diplomats. At heart, he’s still worse than the women who will do literally anything to prop him up.
If it feels too close to home (and to Election Day), that’s what the jokes are for. Real life is far more vulgar than “POTUS,” anyway.
The show runs through Nov. 3, two days before the presidential election. More information at the Blackfriars site here.
Patrick Hosken is an arts writer for CITY. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Oct 1-31, 2024.
