{"id":422917,"date":"2026-01-22T13:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T13:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/422917\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T13:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T13:07:08","slug":"rotus-receptionist-of-the-united-states-review-spiky-maga-satire-with-a-seriously-funny-star-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/422917\/","title":{"rendered":"Rotus: Receptionist of the United States review \u2013 spiky Maga satire with a seriously funny star | Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

This show arrives in London in a week that US politics<\/a> couldn\u2019t be more inescapable. While on one hand, audiences may feel that there\u2019s only so much Trumpian lunacy they can take, it also means that newcomer Leigh Douglas\u2019s satirical one-woman show \u2013 which had a sold-out run at the Edinburgh fringe last year \u2013 couldn\u2019t feel more timely.<\/p>\n

The Irish-born, American-raised comic plays Chastity Quirke, a sorority girl turned White House receptionist working for president Ronald Drumpf, whose administration is highly sexist (and other \u201cists\u201d besides). She begins the show with a fervour for conservatism and a love of Maga-style beauty standards, requesting that the audience scream if they believe in \u201c[making] America hot again\u201d, and gyrating suggestively whenever she gets the chance.<\/p>\n

Chastity isn\u2019t, she insists, merely here to be \u201cwindow dressing for the Drumpf administration\u201d, and sees herself as a crucial part of his operation. But a disembodied narrator \u2013 also in Chastity\u2019s voice \u2013 hints at trouble to come. Drumpf, we learn, plans to unlawfully stay in office past two terms. Chastity is privy to his plot, but will she do as she is told and quietly burn the incriminating documents that her boss has secreted in a Whole Foods carrier bag?<\/p>\n

Douglas is a seriously funny performer who plays not just Chastity but an array of side characters in this 70-minute show, ably directed by Fiona Kingwill. For Drumpf\u2019s men, she leans into bad posture and lecherous gazes, while the women are largely sprightly and coquettish, and the sparse set never feels too limited to bend to each new personage.<\/p>\n

While great fun at first, however, it slowly runs out of juice. As we teeter unevenly towards the end of the show, the gags become less biting and the lines more broad, among them a take on the oft-quoted poem First They Came by Martin Niem\u00f6ller, about apathy in the face of nazism (\u201cFirst they came for the immigrant families\u201d, laments Chastity, \u201cand I said nothing, \u2019cause I wanted the boys to like me\u201d).<\/p>\n

The show ends tensely and abruptly, blunting its spikier moments of satire. Still, there is much to appreciate here, and Douglas and Kingwill have nailed what makes Maga women tick: not just a yearning to be pretty, but a lust for power too.<\/p>\n

At Park theatre, London<\/a>, until 7 February<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This show arrives in London in a week that US politics couldn\u2019t be more inescapable. While on one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-422917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}