POTUS - New Broadway Play directed by Stroman

[SouthernCakes]

Posted: 2/4/22 at 2:06pm

https://www.playbill.com/job/potus-equity-video-submissions-deadline-02-11-22/6744531f-a8ef-4279-918d-2f0001d67469

looks like a new play opening this spring. 

[Valentina3]

Posted: 2/4/22 at 3:51pm

For the Press Secretary breakdown - " Think CJ from West Wing, but with more bite, cynicism, and learned paranoia." I think I want to throw up. Who wrote this?

[EDSOSLO858]

Posted: 2/4/22 at 3:53pm

Valentina3 said: "For the Press Secretary breakdown - "Think CJ from West Wing, but with more bite, cynicism, and learned paranoia." I think I want to throw up. Who wrote this?"

Selina Fillinger

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 2/4/22 at 4:09pm

This was on the Kilroys list in 2019.

If the dates are "Spring 2022, could start as early as March 2022" I'm guessing it's not opening before Tony time. Weirder things have happened, but it would have to move FAST. It would have to play the Broadhurst, Shubert, Imperial, or St. James unless some other show in a smaller house is about to post closing notice.

If 4 roles are cast and 3 roles have offers out, they might have some stars attached which would make this viable.

Seaview Productions (Greg Nobile & Jana Shea), lead producer of Slave Play, is producing it.

Updated On: 2/4/22 at 04:09 PM

[jkcohen626]

Posted: 2/4/22 at 6:05pm

This sounds right up my alley, so I'm intrigued. There definitely isn't a good house for this show for the spring. There would be like 10 play slots open in August though if they were interested in a late summer/early fall engagement. 

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 2/4/22 at 6:18pm

Broadhurst is the most appropriate vacant theatre, but this probably would have announced already if it was going to play there. And even that is a little big unless they have MAJOR stars.

Even if this is kind of trashy, those character descriptions are pretty darn fun. We know Broadway loves b*tchy dames.

Updated On: 2/4/22 at 06:18 PM

[SouthernCakes]

Posted: 2/4/22 at 7:09pm

I feel like with Stroman attached it must be a pretty good name or at least strong material. 

[thedrybandit]

Posted: 2/4/22 at 8:17pm

Stephen Hladik said: "Any rumors of who could be in this? Love the idea of a juicy all female ensemble on Broadway."

I heard Lucy Liu.

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 2/4/22 at 11:51pm

SouthernCakes said: "I feel like with Stroman attached it must be a pretty good name or at least strong material."

Susan Stroman is hardly a bellwether for success. She's never directed a nonmusical play on Broadway, hasn't directed a hit since The Producers, and the general consensus of Bullets and Big Fish was that she had lost her touch. But if this goes over well, it could open up new opportunities for her.

I hope they have much much bigger names than Lucy Liu signed on. Nobody's going out of their way to pay full price to see her.

[jdrye222]

Posted: 2/6/22 at 5:32am

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "SouthernCakes said: "I feel like with Stroman attached it must be a pretty good name or at least strong material."

Susan Stroman is hardly a bellwether for success. She's never directed a nonmusical play on Broadway, hasn't directed a hit sinceThe Producers, and the general consensus ofBulletsandBig Fishwas that she had lost her touch. But if this goes over well, it could open up new opportunities for her.

I hope they have much much bigger names than Lucy Liu signed on. Nobody's going out of their way to pay full price to see her."

I really think no one could have done any better with Big Fish, and Bullets had horrible timing with Allen and all of that nonsense (and I think would’ve been better with an original score).  But financial success isn’t the only measure. And I really think Stroman has a creativity and elegance that most other stagers lack these days. I can’t really think of one who comes near. (Nicholaw and Marshall are both cheap imitations of Stroman in my opinion).  
“Scottsboro Boys” was seen by many as her best work, and I’ve been told she considers it to be herself. I respect the way she seems to choose her projects, and I’m eager to see her do a play. I really wouldn’t consider her finished by any means. 

[JGPR2]

Posted: 2/6/22 at 10:32am

Let me guess, the POTUS will be a liberal Democrat with the morals of Bill Clinton only not as smart. The women for the most part will all be intelligent and interesting leading the "idiot" POTUS by the nose. This is the perfect show for most of the posters on BWW. 

[SouthernCakes]

Posted: 2/6/22 at 11:22am

Honestly, directing wise, I think she did great with Big Fish and Bullets. Both felt big splashy Broadway musicals with enough spectacle to make the shows interesting. But the bones of the shows just weren’t great. Bullets suffered from a non original score and Big Fish suffered, I think, from the structure of the show. The flashbacks and stuff gave it no stakes really. And the score, it seems, has grown on people. 

[willep]

Posted: 2/6/22 at 11:51am

Good guess, considering basically all that information is in the title of the play. Haha.

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 2/6/22 at 12:54pm

The job of directing a new play is wildly different than directing a dance-driven musical based on a movie. I don't know that she's ever been known as an "actor's director."

BULLETS didn't fail because of the Allen controversy (which was pretty much nonexistant at the time, and he was just coming off Oscar-winning Blue Jasmine and Midnight in Paris) –– it failed because it got terrible reviews, had a strange tone, and was a mess. But the director shoulders at least some of the blame.

BIG FISH's failures were in the oversized scale of the show, the structure that deviated from the film in an inferior way, and the poor music/lyrics/book. But again, as the director who was involved for years before it went to Broadway, some of the blame belongs to her.

She hasn't seemed to crack LITTLE DANCER after all these workshops and mixed-review tryouts either.

The brilliance of THE PRODUCERS was that she (and Nathan & cast) was able to distract from the fact that the material isn't very good.

None of the above means that POTUS can't succeed. It simply means she's trying something much different than she's done before. And with a play like this, the casting announcement should be enough to tell us if it will or won't recoup.

Updated On: 2/6/22 at 12:54 PM

[SouthernCakes]

Posted: 2/6/22 at 2:53pm

Interesting insight. And this goes back to my questions of how much say a director has in a new musical. Do they say “hey this melody isn’t good” or hey we don’t need another ballad here, etc? Or is that more between the lyrics/composer/book writer? It seems like with every new musical there are a few clunkers. My mind goes to “Catch Me If you can” which had like maybe 2 good songs and then the rest were awful. Does Mitchell step in and say the material is bad or is that the producer? Or are they all so in deep they can’t see that the material/songs are bad? 
 

I didn’t like the music in Big Fish but it seems to have found a cult following of sorts. Always thought they should have scaled it back to a more folk musical since it’s all about storytelling. 

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 2/6/22 at 3:05pm

SouthernCakes, the director's involvement will vary show to show, but by all accounts Stroman is an integral creative partner in shaping a show, almost like a co-bookwriter.

On any show, a director or producer will certainly be able to say "this song doesn't work" and good collaborators will have an open dialogue with blurred lines. Everyone's working towards the same goal.

She was certainly the "muscle" on BIG FISH. Its subsequent revisions without her have been to make it more intimate and restore the lead role to an older actor and younger actor like the movie. Woody Allen might have had a stronger hand in BULLETS (which would explain the idiotic banana song), but it's still the director's job to bring the best out of the material.

Updated On: 2/6/22 at 03:05 PM

[Peronista]

Posted: 2/7/22 at 12:06am

So strange that Stroman seems to be defined here entirely by her work on Producers followed by Big Fish and Bullets.  Contact - just before Producers - was lauded and richly rewarded.  Scottsboro Boys was an artistic triumph ahead of its time (though recognized as such by London audiences) as was her reworking of Young Frank for the West End.

both Big Fish and Bullets were terrific ideas for musicals - no doubt why she was drawn to them - but in the hands of writers who could not perhaps fulfill the promise of the craft required on the page. While she could have done as Tune did on Grand Hotel and call in a different writer/composer, she stayed true to those she began the journey with for better or worse.  And in the case of Big Fish, it has found its following and admirers in stock and amateur markets.  
Stroman’s gifts for staging, pace, clarity and sheer entertainment are rare and she is brave to apply them to a straight play or any other work she chooses.  The hope here is that the author of the play has something worthwhile to offer us.

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 2/7/22 at 10:22pm

Oscar Hammerstein had not a hit between Show Boat and Oklahoma. Others might have lost heart.

Susan's first foray into opera, The Merry Widow, in 2015, received mixed reviews, with much criticism going to the overuse of dialog that could not be understood.

The 25th Anniversary production of Crazy for You, presented before an audience of Broadway royalty in February, 2017, was so well received that when she workshopped the production in January of the following year the Broadway announcement seemed inevitable, but never came. Susan says that the revival is high on her list, but with the elapse of five years it doesn't seem too likely. The availability of Tony Yazbeck might be in its favor.

I think that she will be heard from again, but whatever may happen she has made her mark and overcome her tragedy.

[jacobsnchz14]

Posted: 2/7/22 at 10:53pm

”POTUS, OR BEHIND EVERY GREAT DUMBASS ARE SEVEN WOMEN TRYING TO KEEP HIM ALIVE”

A derogatory comment, a summit gone awry, an anal abscess — it’s a bad day at the White House. When the President unwittingly spins a PR nightmare into a global crisis, the seven women he most relies upon risk their careers, families, and freedom to save the day.

An uproarious new play by writer Selina Fillinger (Something Clean) and directed by Broadway luminary and five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman, POTUS is a comedy about the women in charge of the man in charge of the free world.

[Melissa25]

Posted: 2/7/22 at 11:17pm

I love Stro but this sounds dreadful.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 2/7/22 at 11:49pm

That description makes it sound like a farce. Almost like a movie The Spice Girls would have made in the 90s.

[inception]

Posted: 2/13/22 at 5:24am

Jordan Catalano said: "That description makes it sound like a farce. Almost like a movie The Spice Girls would have made in the 90s."

If you've got Lucy Liu & Vanessa Williams I'd rather see them in an adaptation of Spice World...Lucy as Posh, Vanessa as Scary

Updated On: 2/13/22 at 05:24 AM

[JBroadway]

Posted: 2/13/22 at 1:24pm

As long as we're doing a retrospective of Stroman's career, I feel like mentioning her 2 most recent projects at Vineyard: 

1. Colman Domingo's "Dot" - a fairly traditional non-musical play. The direction wasn't anything extraordinary or impressive, but it showed she has the basic capability of putting together a coherent production of a living room drama. 

2. "Beast in the Jungle" -  I thought it was extraordinary, but unfortunately it got pretty mixed reception. For my money, it was the most artistically compelling and inventive work I've seen from Stroman aside from Scottsboro Boys. It heavily incorporated dance and other musical staging, but didn't feature any singing, and it was pretty small-scale - no glitz and glamor. 

[Ke3]

Posted: 2/13/22 at 4:05pm

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "SouthernCakes said: "I feel like with Stroman attached it must be a pretty good name or at least strong material."

Susan Stroman is hardly a bellwether for success. She's never directed a nonmusical play on Broadway, hasn't directed a hit sinceThe Producers, and the general consensus ofBulletsandBig Fishwas that she had lost her touch. But if this goes over well, it could open up new opportunities for her.

I hope they have much much bigger names than Lucy Liu signed on. Nobody's going out of their way to pay full price to see her."

I don't doubt that I'm in the minority, but the only thing that gives me any interest in this at all are the Lucy Liu and Vanessa Williams rumors. 

[Sauja]

Posted: 3/1/22 at 12:34pm

And we're on officially. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/theater/potus-broadway-selina-fillinger.html