Gonzo Political Farce Sends a Serious Message

On the day that President Donald Trump lost the election to Joe Biden in 2020, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and I could relax and breathe again. I didn’t realize just how much I had been holding my proverbial breath from 2016, when Trump was elected, to 2020 when he finally vacated the White House. We had been pummeled daily by headlines featuring Trump and his rogue’s gallery of liars, grifters, conspiracy theorists, and purveyors of ‘alternate facts,’ turning our country as we knew it into a surreal rollercoaster ride on which we were trapped with no way to escape.

 I was not alone in feeling the extreme stress and anxiety of living in a country whose president during his four-year term: Banned Muslims from entering the US; bragged about sexually assaulting women; called military war veterans who had been injured or killed in service to our country “suckers” and “losers”; referred to countries populated by Black and Brown people as “shithole countries”; publicly praised Nazi sympathizers, white supremacists, and authoritarian world leaders; tried to bribe a president of another country to obtain dirt on the family of his rival (Biden); appointed three SCOTUS justices who overturned a 50-year-old decision that protected reproductive rights; put children in cages; promoted baseless solutions like injecting bleach; and otherwise turned a blind eye while over one million Americans died of COVID on his watch. Not to mention, was impeached twice, fomented a mob to carry out an insurrection to try to prevent a peaceful transition of power, was found guilty of 34 felonies and found liable in separate cases of sexual assault and slander by respective juries of his peers—and this is not even a complete list of all the horrifying actions and policies Trump implemented during his tenure as president. No wonder we were freaked out!

Selina Fillinger’s POTUS: Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, playing an extended run at ACT Theatre, opened on Broadway in the Spring of 2022—a little over a year after the January 6th insurrection and amid the ongoing throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. POTUS… is an in-your-face farce, a dramatic comedy filled with crude jokes and slapstick bits.

Fillinger probably wrote this play during the shutdown either as a reflection of American society’s relationship to women or as a gift of permission to laugh in the face of extreme anxiety. And because many of us are gripped by the haunting return of all those feelings as we anxiously careen towards this November’s election where (and you can’t make this stuff up!) the very guy who caused all the aforementioned horror and chaos is on the ballot and wants to be president… again! The backdrop of America’s current over-the-top election season makes the satirical commentary of POTUS… feel exceptionally relevant.

Anne Allgood and Annette Toutonghi in POTUS / Rosemary Dai Ross

As the show opens, we meet Harriet, POTUS’ beleaguered chief of staff and Jean, his frantic press secretary (Anne Allgood and Josephine Keefe, respectively), tasked with the perennial cleaning up of POTUS’ misogynistic messes. The latest gaffe threatens to wreak havoc on a women’s leadership event (Female Models of Leadership Council, with its unfortunate abbreviation: FML) which has been organized for that evening. The first word uttered in the play is “cunt”—a fitting start to this gonzo comedy and a harbinger of what kind of evening we are in for. Harriet is describing the word the president used to refer to his wife during a meeting earlier in the day. The indelicate term is couched in an apology POTUS had offered to reporters from major news outlets and three Chinese diplomats: “Please excuse my wife’s absence. She’s having a cunty morning.” To make matters more awkward, POTUS’ wife, Margaret (Gin Hammond) was present in the room when he made the disparaging comment—he just hadn’t seen her.

Margaret wants to know if the president is applying tea tree oil to his anal abscess, the one he developed after a night of “rough butt play” during one of his many dalliances.  (Note: There are plenty of recurring references to POTUS’ extramarital affairs, his current anal abscess, and the “rough butt play” that caused it). POTUS’ girlfriend, Dusty, is an energetic, slightly ditzy young woman who bursts into a White House bathroom halfway through the first act, looking for POTUS, who she thinks, through a misunderstanding, wants to hire her for a “position” (this role is a great vehicle for Carly Corey, who gets to show off her powerhouse voice and some serious dance moves).

POTUS’ mousy secretary (played to delightful effect by Annette Toutonghi) mistakenly thinks that she is about to be fired and replaced by Dusty and tries desperately to prove herself as indispensable through the course of the play. POTUS’ sister Bernadette (Cassi Q. Kohl), through the manipulation of some shady connections and financial string-pulling, gets out of prison for the day to ask her brother for a pardon. Chris (Ayo Tushinde), a journalist, is trying to uncover a story she suspects goes beyond the “cunty” gaffe already making headlines.

Ayo Tushinde and Josephine Keefe in POTUS / Rosemary Dai Ross

If Fillinger’s intent is to distract us through humor from our stress and anxiety, the results are mixed. The story seems contrived at times, causing the humor and the jokes to lose some of their bite, especially in the second act as Fillinger seems to squeeze an excess of situations together in an inconsistent attempt to achieve a level of desperation and hysteria.

Yet as the play ultimately steers away from the farcical towards the more serious, the final takeaway message seems to burst through the fourth wall reminding us of the direction we need to take as a country if we really want to save our democracy and to ensure that we avert catastrophe. And as we stand today on the precipice of a monumental decision that we all must make to choose our next president, the message from Fillinger (an artist who was younger than 28 when she wrote this play and had no idea of the depth of her prescience) is loud and clear … and the voice of the next generation, who has the potential to play a starring role in helping to decide the fate of this nation, deserves to be heard and taken seriously.

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ACT Theater would like to extend the call to action to register to vote. They have offered an opportunity to do so with the League of Women Voters during select performances of POTUS: Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. Bringing unregistered friends and family is highly encouraged.