FOGGY BOTTOM

“First as tragedy, then as farce” may apply to world events, but does it hold equally true for philandering? What happens after the second notch in the bedpost? Foggy Bottom, James Armstrong’s broad Beltway comedy, begins with the deceptively slight scenario of a midlevel diplomat, Dick (Dan Cordle), pretending to be the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs to pry sexual favors from a limber young Chinese refugee (Jo Mei) looking for a green card. Enter a Colombian dancer (Susanna Guzman) on whom he’s pulled the same trick, and then a young Nigerian woman (Angela Polite) and then an Uzbeki (Maja Wampuszyc)—and all bets are off, as the play ricochets from sitcomlike slamming-door high jinks to suspense and whiplash satire.
Armstrong’s script starts out slick, but ultimately he’s just as interested in world affairs as sexual ones, and under Rob Urbinati’s capable direction, the transition is abrupt but effective. Cordle’s good-ole-boy affability is both charming and feckless enough to weather the play’s tonal change, which the intensity of Wampuszyc’s performance makes possible. Also notable is Jeremy Beiler as the diplomat’s bumbling, exasperated friend, who knows better, but ends up being just as culpable for his own cynical sins of omission. What comes after tragedy and farce? Maybe just politics as usual.—Jessica Branch

Jessica Branch, Time Out New York
Issue 572: September 14–20, 2006

Two for the Road

Here are two brief reviews of shows that have just finished their New York runs. Both have a lot going for them and, as a consequence, they both deserve lives outside of New York in productions around the country ...

4 Stars: Foggy Bottom

Contemporary comic taste shows a clear preference for satire and irony, so farce often comes across as decidedly old-fashioned. In a recent production from the Abingdon Theatre Company by James Armstrong, however, we came upon a play called Foggy Bottom that invigorated the farce with political satire and an ironic point of view.

In a government office in Washington, D.C., a lowly bureaucrat pretends to have the power to grant green cards to desperate foreign females and uses that power to have sex with them. As played with bad boy charm by Dan Cordle, this monster manages to be slyly appealing, especially as his three different victims seem happy to oblige him. Our anti-hero is surely courting disaster as his wife (Denise Bessette) keeps interrupting his trysts by calling on the phone, and his buttoned-up best friend and colleague (played with comic precision by Jeremy Beiler) keeps warning him to quit.

The increasing numbers of women who come in and out of the office in that one night, having to hide behind various doors, is pretty standard stuff. ,But thanks in part to Rob Urbinati's crisp and pointed direction, there is something fascinating going on here. The women are all political refugees, having either seen or suffered some very legitimate and frightening horrors. We hear their stories and watch as our sex-mad hero ignores them, which is oddly funny. The comedy, you see, is purposefully uneasy.

The playwright ups the ante when a fourth woman (the excellent Maja Wampuszyc) enters and turns out to be a suicide bomber who wants to blow herself and the President of the United States to smithereens. Her own story is a microcosm of American neglect; we understand what drives her desire for revenge. This should not be funny. But in its own darkly satiric way it is. Our two diplomats comically try to escape, as do the three other women, causing doors to fly open and slam shut within the verities of farce. Yet another unexpected character arrives, and all ends peacefully. But not happily, which is a refreshingly original and honest finale to this surprising piece.

The Siegel Column, Talkin Broadway

It’s Black Box Theater Wednesday again and the kudos of the week award goes to the Abingdon Theater Company, as they launched their new theater season with the production of Foggy Bottom written by a very talented James Armstrong and directed by a very creative Rob Urbinati.
This political comedy playing at the Dorothy Strelsin Theatre in the Abingdon Theatre Arts complex on w. 36th street is heavy on jokes and light on partisan politic bashing as the writer cleverly toed the line of keeping the dialog fair and balanced.
The story is about some low level state department official pretending to be a high level government operative with connections that can get a green card for three attractive women in distress willing to do anything to keep from being sent back to their home countries. The only problem is, this Clinton-like lover of hot babes in need, has only one card to deliver at best and spends the duration of the play lying and cheating his way in and out of certain trouble while using his fragile friendship with another government flunky to back his philandering behavior.
Hiding the three rivals in closets as his new version of shuttle diplomacy to keep these lovelies from catching on to his shenanigans , our loser bound lover does his level best to keep a suspicious wife at bay, as he slowly, painfully and dangerously watches his lustful plans crumble for all to see.
I applaud the writer’s skill at keeping a great ending from being predicable as I was thoroughly surprised at the conclusion delivered by our somebody wannabe’s wife making a last minute entrance tying down a storyline leaving no questions unanswered.
This is a recommendation without reservation.

RetroVision Theater

This State Department bedroom farce brings new meaning to the phrase, “Being in or out of the closet”, as two closet doors of an Asst. Secretary of State, named Pat Simon, who never actually appears, are used as props to transparently hide the sex partners of a State Dept. bureaucrat, named Dick, who uses Pat Simon’s identity to promise green cards to passionate, young women. These women are from Colombia, Nigeria, an Asian country (China or Korea), and all are willing to “do whatever it takes”, day or night, to land that elusive green card. Dick’s unwilling, soon willing partner in crime, Bill, uses the third door to disappear and arrive at indiscreet moments. That third door is also the prop for the intrusion of a fourth woman, from an Eastern European country, who poses as just another green card wannabe, before she turns entertaining into edgy. Her accomplice, Muhammad, in contrast, turns edgy into entertaining.

The ensemble of actors, in this intimate theatrical setting, all project personality and presence, especially the fifth woman, who steals the show, second act. James Armstrong provides a multitude of humor, surprise, political innuendo, and one great monologue, and Rob Urbinati backs this new comedy with tight timing, in the style of Feydeau. Susan Scherer outdoes herself with the ethnic costuming and wide-bottomed raincoat that hides another critical prop. I could not help wonder how much of this play could be based on actual goings-on, “State”-side. To see future productions at Abingdon Theatre Company, click here: www.abingdontheatre.org.

Roberta on the Arts

The sex farce was once a West End staple — you know, where the leading man would appear sans pants in a pair of ridiculous boxers before intermission, and semiclad damsels would keep bursting through closed doors. Now James Armstrong has gamely concocted an American version — a rare theatrical species indeed. The setting is Washington, D.C., and the inspiration is a brave American girl: "Her name was Monica." For Armstrong creates an even rarer Yankee subspecies: the political sex farce. Eventually it is politics that prove to be the playwright's undoing, but before that dampener comes, there's some old-fashioned farcical fun to be had.

Dick (Dan Cordle) is a philandering midlevel bureaucrat who pretends to be the assistant secretary of state so that he can promise green cards to three illegal aliens, all young women he wishes to bed. His conscientious colleague Bill (Jeremy Beiler) takes a dim view of all this, especially when he beholds Chinese refugee Lee (Jo Mei) in Dick's office late at night. Complications really begin when the two other green-card candidates appear: Juanita (Susanna Guzmán) from Colombia and Sadiku (Angela Polite) from Nigeria. Thank heaven for handy closets from which characters, in various stages of undress, can emerge — both literally and metaphorically. When Marina (Maja Wampuszyc) from Uzbekistan appears, goody-goody Bill is tempted — with catastrophic results.

With the entrance of Marina, the playwright seeks to add significance to his frothy fun, but talk of Uzbekistan massacres hardly elevates the humor. Armstrong would also like the hapless males here to represent the current administration: "The world and I have put up with you for eight years." This serious loss of compass is almost rescued by the appearance of a final woman (Denise Bessette), but not quite. A sex farce with a moral? Oh, dear.

Director Rob Urbinati strategically moves his bright-eyed, first-rate cast around the Abingdon Theatre Company's miniscule Dorothy Strelsin Theatre stage, while Susan Scherer's costumes prove witty, both on and off.

Karl Levett, Backstage New York City Theatre Reviews

Affairs of State

James Armstrong's ``Foggy Bottom'' ambitiously strives to meld political satire and bedroom farce. It takes place in the usurped office of the absent Pat Simon, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.

The key word here is ``affairs.'' Dick, an assistant to Simon, impersonates his boss and tries to seduce three young women willing to succumb in exchange for green cards. Dick's underling, Bill, is also lured into the seduction game after first taking a high moral stand.

The first young woman is Chinese, but the other two -- Colombian and African -- hardly qualify as Eurasian or European.

Dick, mistaken for Simon, is targeted by a part-Russian, part-Uzbek woman (the able Maja Wampuszyc) who holds the diplomat responsible for a civilian massacre.

As an American wife, Denise Bessette is effective, though perhaps too farcical in appearance. Don Cordle (Dick) and Jeremy Beiler (Bill) register favorably.

Under Rob Urbinati's direction we get a passel of laughs despite the Abingdon Theater Company's cramped and inhospitable quarters.

John Simon, Bloomberg

Multicultural Confusion, Aggravated by Closets Without Ears and Actors Without Space

James Armstrong’s “Foggy Bottom” is certainly one of the most international farces around. At one point an American man has a Chinese woman, a Colombian woman and a Nigerian woman hiding in closets, while two unexpected visitors, one from Uzbekistan and the other from an unspecified Arab nation, make trouble in the Washington office of an absent government official.

Much of the time this is fairly entertaining, with a nice sense of the ridiculous that almost excuses its occasional lapses of taste. But at other times the action is unbelievable, even by the standards of farce.

For one thing, the closets in this office must be soundproof, because no one inside them ever seems to hear anything going on in the office. Which is a lot. Dick (Dan Cordle) is posing as a high-ranking government official promising a green card to a seemingly demure young Chinese woman, Lee (Jo Mei). He has invited her to “his” office for a late-night drink and to see if she is properly motivated to obtain that card.

Unfortunately for Lee, Dick has also promised green cards to Juanita (Susanna Guzmán) and Sadiku (Angela Polite), who both decide to drop by. Thus, all the closet action. All three women turn out to be as lusty as pornography stars.

Jeremy Beiler creates an appealing comic character as Dick’s nerdy, disapproving friend. Ms. Guzmán has some fun with one splashy speech. And Richard Zekaria, as Muhammad, brings unexpected humor to a character who seems unlikely to be a barrel of laughs.

The whole cast deserves considerable credit for working in such close quarters, proving just how solid a theater’s fourth wall can be, even when the audience’s collective face is pressed against it. If people in the front row decided to cross their legs, they could easily trip the actors...

Anita Gates, New York Times