Welcome to Theater News, a regular column by longtime reviewer Anita W. Harris. Look for it most Thursdays. Or sign up for our Eat. See. Do. newsletter to get it in your inbox.
In a still patriarchal world, women are sometimes forced into difficult decisions and actions, which can be so extreme as to be not only dangerous but humorous.
Two plays opening in Long Beach this weekend focus on such women — Long Beach Playhouse’s “POTUS” and California Repertory’s “The Pliant Girls” — and each will make you laugh, maybe cry, but certainly think.
The Long Beach Playhouse is staging “POTUS” (acronym for president of the United States) in its upstairs Studio Theatre beginning this weekend, a collaboration with Costa Mesa Playhouse.
This zany political farce that playwright Selina Fillinger wrote after the 2016 presidential election is subtitled “or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.”
As that subtitle suggests, the play features seven women, including the president’s chief of staff, press secretary, sister, First Lady… and young mistress.
“When the president unwittingly spins a PR nightmare into a global crisis, the seven brilliant and beleaguered women he relies upon most risk life, liberty, and the pursuit of sanity to keep the commander-in-chief out of trouble,” the Playhouse says.
The play will make you giggle, but also wonder, “Why is a woman not president?”
“POTUS” runs April 26 to May 23 at the Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre, 5021 E. Anaheim St., with shows Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. For tickets and information, call the box office at 562-494-1014 or visit LBPlayhouse.org.
California Repertory, the producing arm of Cal State Long Beach’s theater department, is staging “The Pliant Girls” beginning this weekend as well, in the campus’ Studio Theatre.
Playwright Meghan Brown based her work on an ancient Greek play by Aeschylus called “The Suppliants,” about a large family of sisters forced to marry their cousins but who rebelliously murder their husbands on their wedding night.
“Fifty sisters. Fifty weddings. Zero say in the matter,” Cal Rep describes. Bloody and desperate, the women flee their homeland, seeking refuge and asylum in another place.
Brown’s play focuses on five of the sisters, each recounting their experiences through monologues and flashbacks.
“These young women fight, joke, panic, scheme and refuse to be quietly married off to their cousins,” the theater says. “Fierce, funny and sharply contemporary, ‘The Pliant Girls’ flips an ancient myth into a bold, feminist rebellion, where sisterhood becomes survival strategy, humor becomes weaponry and freedom comes at a sprint.”
Welcome to the world of women.
“The Pliant Girls” runs April 23 to May 2 at CSULB’s Studio Theater, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., with shows most nights at 7:30 p.m., and a matinee on Saturday, May 2 at 2 p.m. For tickets and information, visit CSULB.edu. Run time is 90 minutes with no intermission.