Review: Tickle Your Funny Bone With the Politically Incorrect Presidential Portrayal NOVEMBER at NYNE Productions

By: Feb. 23, 2019
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Review: Tickle Your Funny Bone With the Politically Incorrect Presidential Portrayal NOVEMBER at NYNE Productions

The President is an incompetent, corrupt, egocentric, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, avaricious, foul-mouthed, extortionist, buffoonish, equivocator a-hole.... And in three acts, it is absolute perfection to watch Steven Bucko's portrayal in NYNE's timely production of David Mamet's NOVEMBER.

Director Randy Magruder expertly cast the small ensemble with Steven leading the charge as the not-wanting-to-be-exiting President Charles Smith.

In NOVEMBER, it's the final week before Election Day, and President Smith is in dire need of a financial infusion for his last-ditch effort to save his seat in the White House. He needs money to fund his Presidential Library, but his poll numbers are so low that no one is willing to contribute. He asks his towering aide Archer Brown played with cynical perfection by Greg Summerall 'what is it about me that people don't like?'. "That you're still here," Archer quips.

So sets the frantic pace of three telephones constantly ringing, the president lying to his loose-lipped wife to cause a potential catastrophe, abusing his power to threaten to send people on the piggy plane to Bulgaria and a plan to strongarm the National Association of Turkey Manufacturers to cough up $200 million to pardon two Thanksgiving turkeys or he'll choose another species to represent the first Thanksgiving on live TV.

"Why is everyone turning on me," President Smith asks Archer. "Because you've f----ed up everything you've touched."

Does art imitate life, despite the play being written in 2008?

"We can't build the fence to keep out the illegal immigrants," Archer warns President Smith during another tirade. "We need the illegal immigrants to build the fence," Archer responds.

Enter no-nonsense, conservative, straight-laced turkey representative, in slicked-back bun, and crisp black and white attire, played astutely by Lindsey Guzzi. She doesn't balk at the president inflated monetary proposal as long as the turkeys can smell the president's hand. When she slips out of her smile-plastered niceness and drops the F-bomb on the President, I think we all did a little happy dance in our seats.

Though the president's speech writer Clarice Bernstein is terribly ill after traveling back from adopting a baby in China, that doesn't stop him from ordering her to come into the office and write him a pivotal address. Upon entering, Katie Sirmons stole the stage as the disheveled, sniffly, sneezing, pouting lesbian speechwriter who holds his speech hostage. She will only finish the best speech the president has ever read if he marries her to her girlfriend, (which at the time that the play was written was illegal). She speaks of our country being a nation of shade-tree mechanics, of people who don't care about a colleague's politics so long as he or she is trustworthy and effective. She is the sanity in the White House, the grounded revolutionary, the voice of reason and oftentimes, she doesn't need to say a word - Katie's pained looks of frustration and disgust speak volumes.

One of the many groups of ethnicities that the president has insulted with slurs and obscenities, Native American Chief Dwight Grackle enters the White House intent on killing the president and claiming his revenge. I do find it ironic that a group of Grackles is defined as a plague or an annoyance and that is what the Chief is to the President. Played superbly by Jeff Sirmons, after a failed murder attempt, Dwight has a plan that allows he and the president to exit the White House on a high note.

NOVEMBER is a politically-incorrect, laugh out loud, profanity-laced, overtly offensive directorial debut of Randy worthy of your time and your tickle bone.



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