By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Yes, she said it.
The woman behind the desk used a crude term for female genitalia.
Then she said it again explaining the president of the United States had just used word, well, a form of the word in a press conference attended by media from around the world.
He used it about his wife, who unbeknownst to him was there.
Now the woman, the president’s chief of staff, and the other woman, the press secretary are faced with dealing with the repercussions, and this is just the start.
The play is a hilarious, at times manic, behind the scenes, and under the covers, at a fictional, though not without its echoes from the headlines, White House.
It involves an embarrassing wound on the president’s butt, an accidental hallucinogenic trip, the continual difficulties of a nursing mom, and the thrown-in-anger metal bust of a prominent suffragist.
“POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying To Keep Him Alive,” directed by Jonathan Chambers, is on stage at BGSU’s Donnell Theatre, tonight (11-16), Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at bgsu.edu/the-arts/tickets.
In the slickly written script by Selina Fellinger, we are introduced to the seven women of the title starting with those on the inside and joke by joke moving to those wanting to get in. The title character never appears though his foibles and missteps shape the lives of the seven women.
Harriet (Madison Ellis) is the chief of staff. She is intense and controlling. She does not so much work for the President, one character says, as works the president.
Jean (Maria Fallouh) as press secretary spins what the president does in the most favorable light – a seemingly impossible task. Stephanie (Regina Wolfe) is an eager-to-please secretary, who Harriet is futilely trying to mold into someone more like herself.
We meet Stephanie as she is keeping first lady Margaret (Airené Williams) from seeing her husband. Margaret is a woman with multiple non-profits, a law career, and a book to her name. So why isn’t she president? Stephanie asks. That’s the question.
It’s a question posed other females, including Harriet. The answer is they are the wrong gender.
Harriet describes a meeting of world leaders engaged in nuclear negotiations as a roomful of men doing what they love, talking about weapons “and not a woman in sight.”
But you’re there, Jean corrects.
“I don’t count,” Harriet responds.
With the mess getting ready to boil over, Jean arrives in her office to find the reporter Chris (Hurricane Harrington) pumping her breasts. She is the recently divorced mother of three, and is in danger of losing her job.
The reporter knows something is cooking and wants to scoop her in-house rivals. She’s just not sure what is simmering.
The big fear for Harriet, Jean, and Margaret is that the president will pardon his sister Bernadette (Sara Madden) who is in prison on drug trafficking charges. Some of her customers are in the White House.
Then Stephanie confronts Dusty (McKinley Witt) wandering around looking for the president with VIP tag around her neck. We are introduced to Dusty throwing up in a basket, she’s pregnant, and she can only hold down slushies.
The father is the president.
Stephanie is a cheery, upbeat kind of gal, who will do anything for the cause.
All this action is greased by raunchy humor. The action is like office roller derby, with each character speeding around, elbows out for anyone who gets in the way.
They realize as things spin out of control that they have to work together, including Stephanie, who has managed to ingest a large amount of an unnamed hallucinogen and cavorts around stage pants-less and in a world of her own.
Still with world peace hanging in the balance, she comes through.
That opening vulgarity comes back in the end. By then the audience will be inured to its shock value (or they’ve left the hall in a huff).
As the president addresses the women’s leadership group, the seven women, having done their jobs, are facing into a feminist dawn.
