POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive

The show centers around a PR nightmare for the White House while seven women try to keep the president out of trouble.^[5]

Jesse Green, chief theatre critic for The New York Times, gave the production a mixed review, writing, "As a farce, 'POTUS' still plays by old and almost definitionally male rules; farce is built on tropes of domination and violence. On the other hand, and more happily, 'POTUS' lets us experience the double-bind of exceptional women unmediated by the men who depend on their complicity."^[6]

The Washington Post theatre critic Peter Marks compared the show favorably to that of a mix between Saturday Night Live (SNL) and Veep. He also praised its cast and in particular Susan Stroman for orchestrating the chaos on stage, writing, "Veteran director Susan Stroman is a choreographer by training. She has the mechanics of farce down pat, a knowledge base that ensures this team at all times has clockwork timing in its arsenal."^[7]

The ensemble cast received acclaim for their comedic roles. Variety critic Marilyn Stasio praised DeLaria as "priceless" and "vivid enough to be memorable".^[8] Maureen Lee Lenker of Entertainment Weekly said, "Julianne Hough is particularly mesmerizing...[she] could easily be a mere stereotype, but she surprises at every turn."^[9] Deadline Hollywood praised White's performance, calling her "one of the stage’s great comic actors" who "uses her knife-sharp bark of a voice as a sort of aural embodiment of the chaos on stage".^[10]

In the New York Post's mixed review, Johnny Oleksinski heaped praise on Dratch's performance, writing, "The genius Dratch is a riot as a nervous, introverted employee who practices power stances and can’t get a word in edgewise. Then she accidentally downs a bunch of hallucinogenic pills she thought were Tums and goes completely loco. The 'SNL' alum running wide-eyed around the theater wearing an inner-tube is the best part of the play."^[11]