Images from the media night presentation of MHMT's POTUS on Wednesday. -- NEWS PHOTO ANNA SMITH
asmith@medicinehatnews.com
Medicine Hat Musical Theatre’s latest play is a high-energy, raunchy commentary on female solidarity-or, more often, the lack thereof.
POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, play by Selina Fillinger is decidedly for adult audiences, opening with Loretta Lutz as chief of staff Harriet shouting a word that cannot be repeated in the News and decidedly not getting more tame from there.
What it is, however, is hilarious.
While the stakes are undoubtedly higher than most women deal with in their lives, the themes of struggling with balancing professional obligations and private life, trying to find self confidence and having contributions overshadowed by a man who did very little of the work are presented in a farcical but utterly relatable manner, only improved by the standout performances of the all-female cast.
The story manages to highlight seven leads, each with their own problems that all seem to lead back to the president, who artfully manages to never show his face on stage.
Because of his simultaneous overbearing presence and conspicuous absence from the story, tension has nowhere to go but the other women, crashing into each other with varying results. The women are vicious with each other, venting frustration that is often, but not always, misdirected away from the real source of their woes in a way that feels surprisingly down to earth for a performance that so prominently features a bright yellow innertube.
Lutz, Rebecca Drew, Leah Steiner, Shelby Wray, Rebecca Drew, Jackie Taylor and Tammy Giesbrecht make up the whole of the cast and are all standout actors in their own right. For some of these women, this serves as a powerful debut into the Gas City’s community theatre scene, where for others, it is easily another feather in the cap of a growing legacy on stage.
The set is charming and remarkably lived in; this particular setting does not need the elaborate moving parts that have graced the MHMT stage in recent years and this in itself, helps provide an anchor for the bold hijinks that run amok throughout it. Through several scandals, cursing fits and arguments that nearly seem to come to blows, the same three rooms are clearly in sight, reminding the audience of how much the space-and the staff in it-is fighting to contain.
POTUS is a story best experienced blind, as the inability to predict how the woman can possibly wrap this story up neatly is undoubtedly part of the charm.
Tickets are still available for select nights of the performance, so if residents have a spare evening and a sense of humor, they’re encouraged to allow the seven women who are mostly dedicated to keeping one of the most powerful men in the world standing upright, to leave them in stitches long after the car ride home.
