POTUS starring Vanessa Williams, Julianne Hough, Rachel Dratch & More to Open This Spring

I love Rachel Dratch! So happy for her

Here's the NYT exclusive.

I love Williams, Dratch, Delaria, Cooper, and White. I don't really know the work of the other two.

That combo probably isn't enough to sell a sustainable number of tickets at the Shubert (especially with this opening after the Tony cutoff), but I'm personally interested in seeing these ladies in a new comedy.

$5.9 mil for a Broadway play tho?? <mind-exploding emoji>

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "I love Williams, Dratch, Delaria, Cooper, and White. I don't really know the work of the other two. "

Julianne Hough is a two-time "Dancing With the Stars" champion; her brother Derek has won it six times with various partners. This will be her Broadway debut.

Suzy Nakamura plays Ken Jeong's wife on "Dr. Ken" and is also making her Main Stem debut.

Updated On: 3/1/22 at 12:39 PM

Lea Delaaria is a lesbian comic, singer and actress- and she is wonderful.

$6m for a play. I’d get excited that we are getting a big splashy production, but Thoughts on a Colored Man had a similar budget and that was pretty basic…

It should be noted that while this is likely going to be the first official opening of the 2022-2023 Season, the Tony Awards have NOT announced any timeline for this year's eligibility cutoff or voting period (or a date for the ceremony). I'm sure they wanted to keep this close to the chest and not have any hard dates in case Covid necessitated a delay. So it theoretically COULD sneak into this season if eligibility dates are pushed back further than usual. But the fact that this production was initially searching for as early as March, yet is fine with a May opening, signals that they are not really concerned with awards season.

Was it said what theater this is going to?

Love everything about this- save for the premise described.

"the work centers on a PR nightmare that befalls the White House, with seven female support staff risking everything to keep the commander-in-chief out of trouble"

Does this idea still hold up in spite of...everything? I'll go see it because that cast, but it'll be interesting to see if this is a believable conceit given the most recent four-year-stint.

I see tickets available on TeleCharge. I don't get how they decide which seats to make available. Only one day, May 11, in the week we will be seeing shows is there a good selection of reasonably priced seats. Every other day has the same set of seats available but not all of them. Just weird. Almost like they are trying to sell the iffy seats and maybe testing out the waters of how much to charge before they make all the good (i.e. expensive) seats available. I am always trying to get the best seat at a reasonable price. This method makes that hard when not all seats are made available at the same time.

Hang on before buying if the prices and seat locations offend. As good as the cast is, and it's stellar indeed, this will likely be heavily discounted.

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "Auggie27 said: "Hang on before buying if the prices and seat locations offend. As good as the cast is, and it's stellar indeed, this will likely be heavily discounted."

This. The ensemble may be talented, but it is not a group of stars that will sell large volumes of full-priced tickets.

Separate from the above comment — who replaced Lucy Liu?"

Being entirely blunt, it’s also not the best play in the world either.

VintageSnarker: Is anyone familiar with the work of the young playwright?

I am not so I did a bit of research into her previous plays.

Something Clean - (Roundabout) The aftermath of a sex crime and how a mother (Kathryn Erbe) tries anything to keep her family intact. A Brantley critic pick in 2019. There were 72 reviews on Show-Score with an overall average score of 84. More importantly, 94% were positive, 6% mixed and 0% negative.

Faceless - Time Out called it “one hell of a debut” about a white teenage girl who wants to move overseas and join ISIS. For many the play will surely bring to mind the works of a young Aaron Sorkin: The characters are broad yet complex, likable but difficult, and often seem like vehicles for the words coming out of their mouths. This comparison is about 80% compliment, 20% critique.

I like the fact that the character of the President is not part of the cast. My research has me intrigued and I am looking forward to this being a slick well-written farce that my soul really needs. Count me in.