Review: POTUS at Santa Fe Playhouse
(Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep HIm Alive)
America is being led by a dumbass.
Is that too on the nose for you right now?
In POTUS (Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive), seven female characters attempt to save the president of the United States from himself during a series of gaffs, crises and scandals on a single day in the White House.
Playwright Selina Fillinger’s work is not so much a political satire, but a farcical free-for-all that is definitely not for the faint of heart (the first word uttered is C*NT – if that freaks you out, this may not be the show for you). Some of the humor is played for pure shock value, but much of the increasingly frenetic and out of control action is straight out of Looney Tunes or the Marx Brothers, just a little more adult-themed.
It takes an amazing amount of commitment and fearlessness to play these characters, and to keep them from becoming parodies or typical female tropes – the bitch, the unfulfilled wife, the harlot, the control freak – and the women of Santa Fe Playhouse’s POTUS are up to the task.
Larisa Oleynik plays Harriet, the president’s Chief of Staff, who is the actual leader of the free world. The first crisis she must handle, along with Press Secretary Jean (Danielle Simone) is that the president used that aforementioned C-word to describe his wife. First Lady Margaret, (Angela Littleton), is trying to make herself seem “earthy” after being criticized for her tone-deaf attire at a homeless shelter event. She is sporting Crocs with her exclusively purple wardrobe and aside from her obvious annoyance at being misunderstood, she is most certainly another “brains behind the man” woman. Is she more qualified than her dumbass husband to be president? She thinks so, and so should you.
In what might be the funniest character in a very funny show, Rikki Carroll plays Stephanie, the president’s personal secretary, an insecure, skittish woman who does affirmation exercises and spends every day looking scared. When Stephanie accidentally ingests hallucinogens, hilarity ensues – no spoilers here, just go see for yourself.
Stephanie got the drugs from the president’s sister Bernadette (Kate Udall), a convicted and imprisoned international drug dealer who shows up at the White House, with a leg monitor, having been promised a pardon by her brother. Udall gives Bernadette the appropriate swagger of a highly confident con woman.
Asiah Thomas-Mandlman portrays White House reporter Chris, a new mom who spends an inordinate amount of time hooked to a breast pump as she tries to get to the bottom of what the other women are trying to cover up She’s newly divorced and fearful of being replaced at her job by a younger man, so getting the scoop is her driving force.
Finally, as if these six weren’t enough, along comes Dusty (Arwyn Vernold), the president’s side piece and (as if this man weren’t already fixed in our minds as a dumbass) soon-to-be mother of POTUS’s baby.
Kudos to all seven women, who function as a true ensemble, with each character getting her moment to shine. Vernold and Carroll are hilarious in their roles; Udall and Oleynik do a great job keeping the ship afloat through a series of increasingly insane scenarios. Littleton is commanding as FLOTUS and Simone and Thomas-Mandlman provide the voices of reason among the chaos.
Excellent direction by Robyn Rikoon and Amrita Dhaliwa, especially the precision choreography of the entire play, which could be called an extended chase scene with a plot. Design elements - Scenic (Sandra Lopez), Costume (Joseph Blaha) Props (David James Garcia), Sound (Saibi Khalsa) and Lighting (Carson Decker) are all excellent. Ditto the Stage Management team (Lara Terrell & Lucy Felt), who no doubt had some chaos backstage in making the chaos onstage work.
The Playhouse continues to up their game, and congratulations to them for hiring both a Fight Director (Ambrose Ferber) and Director in Intimacy (Zoe Burke). It’s starting to become more and more apparent when a company is utilizing these roles and when they are not.
What’s the moral of this farce? Don’t hire a dumbass to do the job, or better yet, hire the capable women brought in to clean up his messes instead. POTUS runs through April 12 at the Santa Fe Playhouse.
The production is now on stage March 19th, 2026 through April 12th, 2026.
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