If “The West Wing” was designed into a live stage exhibit, banned all guys and snorted a line of coke in advance of the curtain went up, it may search a thing like “POTUS,” the hyperactive new farce that opened Wednesday on Broadway.
A person hour and 45 minutes, with a single intermission. At the Shubert Theatre, 225 W 44th Avenue.
Selina Fillinger’s bizarre and wired comedy imagines a White Property fiasco, in which the president — we never meet him or anyone else with a Y chromosome — publicly tends to make a crass remark about the initial girl (Vanessa Williams) and leaves a crew of panicked gals staffers to clean up up his PR mess.
And what a mess it is. The powering-the-scenes predicament immediately spirals out of handle way past the realm of believability. On Beowulf Boritt’s consistently relocating established of rotating rooms and hallways, there is a demise, a drug vacation, and gallons of blue-tinted vomit.
At to start with the romp is engaging, lifted by a genuinely amazing cast of comedic actors who embrace and explode the qualities that created them popular. Then, in Act 2, the established-ups develop into so unwieldy and ludicrous that it turns into an episode of “Hoarders: Broadway Version.” Anyone desired to appear in with gloves and a rubbish bag and do some key decluttering.
Sprinting all-around like it is the end credits of a “Benny Hill” episode are White Residence chief of personnel Harriet (Julie White), assistant Stephanie (Rachel Dratch), press secretary Jean (Suzy Nakamura), rebel presidential sister Bernadette (Lea DeLaria), dogged reporter Chris (Lilli Cooper) and the piggish prez’s peppy mistress Dusty (Julianne Hough).
The genius Dratch is a riot as a nervous, introverted staff who practices electrical power stances and just cannot get a phrase in edgewise. Then she unintentionally downs a bunch of hallucinogenic supplements she thought were being Tums and goes completely loco. The “SNL” alum operating huge-eyed all over the theater wearing an interior-tube is the most effective section of the engage in. Dratch doesn’t have to do the job for laughs — she gets them by current.
As perfectly as Dratch does meek, White rocks frazzled and furious. Her formidable manager operates like lightning and thunder — there will be an incredulous appear quickly followed by a roaring shout.
Hough goes total ditz as she slurps boozy slushies — and director Susan Stroman lets her do some signature dancing — although DeLaria is just about a continuance of Massive Boo on “Orange Is the New Black.” At the get started of the clearly show, she’s released from prison and wears a GPS ankle bracelet. She and Nakamura have foolish chemistry as their past fling is dredged up.
Cooper’s journalist has the the very least to do, which is too bad. Reporters are pleasing wackos and there surely have been some far more intelligent eventualities for her to be thrown into. Why do you believe they make so several damn videos about us?
What will attractiveness to some of about Fillinger’s perform — but what also holds it back — is that it’s cranked up to about an 11 from the second the lights go up. The best farces, as very well as sit-coms, start out with some serene normalcy prior to everything goes haywire. How can we perceive this planet falling aside, and laugh uncontrollably, if we under no circumstances see it put jointly? The non-stop superior power desensitizes by Act 2. The ending, by the way, appears like it is trying to channel the revenge antics of “9 to 5,” — however, it does not adhere the landing.
At just two 45-moment acts, nevertheless, it is a enjoyable evening out. “POTUS” would just go down a ton smoother with one of Dusty’s 80-proof slushies.
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