POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive

Trinity Rep has managed — once again — to astonish.

Raucously, wildly, hilariously, outrageously, extraordinarily, brilliantly astonish — with Selina Fillinger's outlandishly absurd farce — "POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive" — which opens the theater's 61st season and is on stage now.

This fantastical feminist farce — which springs from the buffoonery of a male President of the United States of America — is fantastically performed, fantastically directed and unlike anything you've ever seen.

At the heart of Fillinger's stunning, unforgettable riot of a play are the seven women tasked with trying to save democracy after the president — with a single unprintable (yet curiously powerful) word — creates a public relations nightmare that nearly sends the world into a global crisis. Spoiler alert: we never see the cowardly president.

Instead, we see the women who are really running the country — Harriet, the president’s chief of staff (played on opening night by understudy Mary Potts Dennis standing in for Deb Martin who was about to make her Trinity debut until she was sidelined with a back injury), Jean, his press secretary (resident company member Rachael Warren); Stephanie, his secretary (Jenna Lea Scott); Margaret, the first lady (resident company member Jackie Davis); Chris, a White House journalist (Sara States); Bernadette, his sister (Rachel Dulude) and Dusty, his pregnant mistress (Tay Bass) — dart, dash and traipse about the stage — alternately supporting and confronting one another — as their talents, skills, foibles and strengths are on full display and as everyone wonders, "Why isn't SHE the actual president?"

What a cast! 

Dennis, as Harriet, is strong and splendid as the harried chief of staff — as is Davis, as the over-qualified, Croc-wearing first lady; Warren as the blind-sided, astonished press secretary, and States, as the breast milk-pumping, scoop-chasing reporter — but Scott, Dulude and Bass have been given the show-stopping, scene-stealing roles. You will not soon forget Dulude as the president's butch, ankle-bracelet-wearing jailbird sister. Talk about making an entrance! The audience went wild!

Scott, who unravels before our eyes, meanders around the theater with a child's inner tube around her neck, is comedy gold. But it's Bass, as the president's blue Slurpee-slurping farmgirl mistress Dusty, pregnant with the president's baby, who steals the show again and again.

Our heads were spinning (and our sides were splitting) on opening night — as we watched the seven women stomp zip in and out, up and down, on and off while slapping, door slamming and punch landing — all in the name of democracy.

Among the many gifts Fillinger gives to the audience with this wild romp of a show — along with the dazzling dialogue  — is the permission to laugh. And laugh we did, along with the enthusiastic audience. We laughed, guffawed and gasped and hooted and howled —  as we followed the madcap, fast-paced, slapstick antics of the seven "fierce, fabulous, and fricking hilarious women" and as we forgot — for 90-plus wild and glorious minutes — the bizarre absurdities taking place outside on the real political stage.

Animal-stealing and eating Ohioans? Really?

The play, you see, is as cathartic and liberating as it is fun — but it's also a warning of sorts. Yes, it's cathartic to laugh at the fictional (and often crude) drama unfolding on the stage before us — a stage whose centerpiece is the once sacred Presidential Seal — and it's liberating to watch as norms of all kinds are upended and smashed (like the bust of Alice Paul that goes crashing through an open door) but then we remember the premise of the play — that an utter fool, one man, is being propped up, bolstered and protected — and then the shock and horror come knocking at the door.

Fillinger, a Los Angeles-based writer and performer was inspired, we learn, to write her play during Donald Trump’s first run for office.

For me, the strongest message the show — along with the reminder to vote on Nov. 5, and to encourage everyone we know to vote on Nov. 5 — is the urgency of the upcoming election, and the very clear decision we need to make at the ballot box on Nov. 5 if we too, like the seven women in the show, are planning to save democracy. Yes, clearly, the time has come for a woman to lead our country.

"POTUS," which opened on Broadway in 2022, and earned three Tony Award nominations, runs on its own from Sept. 5 – 22, then in rotating repertory with "Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – APT 2B" by Kate Hamill, which runs from Oct. 10 – 27.  

Bravo to the "POTUS"’ creative team; Scenic Designer Collette Pollard, Costume Designer Shahrzad Mazaheri, Lighting Designer Dawn Chiang, Sound Designer Megumi Katayama, Fight and Intimacy coordinator Rocio Mendez and Dialect Coach Rebecca Gibel.

For more information, visit online at trinityrep.com/potus, or call 401-351-4242.