The Arden Theatre presents Selina Fillinger’s POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying To Keep Him Alive

These include his put-upon wife Margaret (Rachel Leslie) and his enthusiastic lover Dusty (Alia Munsch); his beleaguered chief of staff Harriet (Susan Riley Stevens) and his con-woman sister Bernadette (Kimberly Gilbert). Also along for the ride are Chris (Jessica Johnson), a journalist struggling to balance her professional duties with her responsibilities as a working mom; Jean (Karen Peakes), a press secretary who’s spinning as fast as she can; and Stephanie (Suzanne O’Donnell), a brilliant but insecure analyst in the grips of an acid trip.

Over the course of two hours, this motley crew tries to hide from everyone that one of them might have killed the leader of the free world. Other reservations come to light that might be equally damning: that he fathered a child outside of his marriage; that he plans to pardon a family member still very much engaged in a criminal syndicate; and that most of the time, he seems to have no idea what he’s actually doing.

Still stereotyping women

Fillinger’s raucous comedy, which debuted on Broadway in 2022, makes a canny choice for election-year programming—especially in a race where a staggeringly qualified woman finds herself running against, to borrow another term from the work’s full title, a dumbass. Yet the Arden’s production, directed by Jennifer Childs, struggles to settle into a satisfying comic rhythm, and the lack of laughs makes the entire enterprise look less appealing by comparison.

For a play that wears its feminist ideals on its sleeve, Fillinger too often defaults to tired stereotypes about women. The characters don’t rise above depictions of the put-upon wife, the ditzy mistress, and the unfulfilled professional who puts her career above all else. With the exception of Johnson, who finds genuine humor in some desperately unfunny writing, the performances don’t transcend the material either.

The wrong energy

Childs’s direction also lacks the high-octane energy that farce requires. There are structural holes in Fillinger’s play that would challenge any director—certain scenes end abruptly, and an unnecessary intermission zaps the forward momentum—but the ensemble work and comedic timing on display here seem devoid of precision and propulsive thrust. Poorly timed blackouts that go on far too long stop the play dead in its tracks. The genre is all about physicality, but Eli Lynn’s fight choreography looks far too tentative.

The Arden supplies a handsome physical production, with a particularly attractive oval-office set by Colin McIlvaine. But Ariel Wang’s costumes flatter none of the actors, and in a distracting detail, microphone wires jut out too prominently from the performers’ clothing.

POTUS considers a sharp and timely message: that women are regularly tasked to clean up messes made by powerful men. It shows the seven women trying to keep the dumbass alive. It doesn’t ask why they’re expending so much energy on a lost cause—but it should.