Since the early days of civilization, one of the world’s most enthralling means of holding power to truth is by way of our playwrights. Whether they point out global power dynamics, political peccadillos or the forever fraught give-and-take-take-take between the sexes.
A pet example of mine is “Lysistrata,” Aristophanes’ 411 B.C. comic work involving a group of women aiming to end the Peloponnesian War with their own sanctions — withholding sex from warring men.
But a funny thing happened in the slip stream of recent campaign trails. With a country in the throes of unbridgeable division, a pandemic darkened all the stages, which for millennia people have made sense of a mad, mad, ragingly mad world.
But now, the dramatic artists are catching up — no small feat for an artform reliant on gathering. As the fall season gets underway in Charleston, two of its first productions go fearlessly into the political breach, though through markedly different methods.
The Footlight Players does so by ratcheting up the antics in a play whose name offers a clue to its irreverent, satirical style. That name is “POTUS: Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive,” which enjoyed a Broadway run in 2022. A regional premiere of the play is now directed by Kyle Barnette in a production running at Queen Street Playhouse through Sept. 9.
Playwright Selina Fillinger pulls no punches in mixing quips with a slew of four-letter-words, the latter of which are bracing enough that the company has posted signs on its front doors warning of explicit content. The company warns this is not fare for everyone, particularly those hovering in that age range not yet old enough to vote.
And, yes, there is plenty else on stage that begs for such cautionary measures, bandied about in its setting of the White House of a fictional off-stage president, who is surrounded by seven women who from curtain-up look to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In classic farcical fashion, they pop in and out of offices and press rooms, appearing from the various entryways in Cody Rutledge’s presidential set.
The lot is commandeered by the pragmatically-coiffed Chief of Staff, Hillary, played with gusto by Sam (Andrews) Smith. These include the double-degreed, under-respected First Lady (Ariana Snowden); the savvily spinning press secretary (Imani Lloyd); an embattled, breast-pumping journalist (Genese Gee-Schmidtke); a hand-wringing, polyglot presidential secretary (Jenny Bettke); a fresh-from-the-pokey sister of POTUS (Caitlin Brown); and a pregnant escort (Sarah Callahan Black).
Still, with all this mayhem around him, we never see said president himself. The women alone amp it up to 11 out of the gate, with the staff reeling from a highly offensive word he has attached to his wife, and that becomes a dramatic motif. Hijinks ensue from there, with “No, she didn’t” blue humor raging across the stage at every opportunity, as these women train their collectively formidable brain trust on freeing themselves from quite a pickle that has presented itself.
So, yes, this is not the Footlight Players of yesteryear — and, no, it is not for everyone. But then again, it is not the world of yesteryear either. There is very little in this country that is universally embraced. Which side of this dramatic divide you fall on could have to do more with your appetite for the lurid than for your political leanings.
Gauging audience response (as well as the recent addition of more performances), it may scratch an itch as a form of scream therapy. And it does boast some sharp satirical writing peering out regularly from the profane. Or, the no-holds-barred onslaught may instead scratch a head.
A scene from “Chilling Effect: The Reality Winner Interrogation,” a new production directed Jay Danner for Village Repertory Co. in collaboration with Threshold Repertory Theatre. Provided
There are some terrific performances along the way, chief among them that of Sarah Callahan Black as the bedazzled-jean-short-sporting, curiously capable escort Dusty. There is also plenty of charge throughout the ensemble. The play’s bent toward full-tilt, dizzying shrill is arguably justified given most any news cycle. The lack of buildup in blasting its bracingly bawdy sensibility results in an unrelenting raucous ride. If you’re game, this cast is raring to go there.
Over on Society Street, shrill was supplanted by chill, with Village Repertory Co. set for its first full season since the pandemic, in collaboration with Threshold Repertory Theatre at its Society Street venue. Part of a season billed as being focused on the Female Gaze, “Chilling Effect: The Reality Winner Interrogation” is a new production directed Jay Danner, who adapted original FBI transcripts to serve as the play’s verbatim text.
For the uninitiated, Reality Winner is a U.S. Air Force veteran and former intelligence contractor who made headlines for her role in the leaking of defense information surrounding the 2016 presidential election. I’m being intentionally oblique here, to somewhat avoid spoilers about the details that come to light in this transfixing one-act. It is based solely on the actual exchange between Winner and three FBI interrogators.
The action begins outside her picket-fence-accented home in Augusta, Ga., as represented outside and in by a simple, effective set designed by Keely Enright and Danner. When on this day Winner arrives home ready to let her dog out, she is greeted by two special agents.
It hooked me from the first tentative look of the grocery bag-toting Winner (Shannon Vogt), pulling me in she proceeds with polite caution, fielding questions from the unnervingly affable Special Agent Justin Garrick (Brian Turner) and Special Agent Wallace Taylor (Patrick Arnheim). The agents are soon joined by an aviator-sunglass-clad third agent (Bradley Keith), who gets down to the business of securing the premises with the matter-of-fact insouciance of a cable guy.
As the suspect’s dog and cat are dealt with (and her firearms, too), Winner begins her own game of cat-and-mouse, couched in a manner so gentle and accommodating it is tough to get a beat on just how culpable she is. At the same time, the easygoing Garrick is just as inscrutable, except that there likely wouldn’t be as much crime-scene-taped ado about nothing if this wasn’t considered a serious offense.
They all circle closer and closer to the truth, with Garrick coaxing out Winner’s version by dangling bits of evidence, peeling back the layers of exactly why a woman eager for her next deployment would wind up implicated in crimes related to The Espionage Act.
Adapted by Danner, the transcripts are the genuine article, and pack plenty of dramatic tension in Winner’s story. Danner’s direction of this ensemble also delivers perfectly matched performances that are the special sauce of this production. Vogt is a triumph, devising a deeply affecting portrait of a woman grappling with the meaning of patriotism in a country lurching in ways she could not square with.
She is well met by Turner’s deceptively amenable Garrick, coupled with Arnheim’s subtle tinge of menace. Then there is Keith as the unnamed agent, who swaggers on stage with crackling veracity, merging jock and jocularity with patent male energy that is a compelling counterpoint to Vogt’s astute acquiescence.
All in all, whether gone wild or gone rogue, the women are large and demanding to take charge, aching to let loose the long-suppressed views in their many-faceted heads.
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