Quasimondo Puts January 6 Onstage

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Quasimondo Physical Theatre Red, White and Coup poster

On Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump encouraged a group of supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol. The riot that ensued was one of the darkest moments in Washington D.C. in recent memory. Quasimondo Physical Theatre embarks an exhaustive and ambitious theatrical inquiry into the events leading to January 6 in a three-hour performance piece. Red, White and Coup is a reconstruction of select moments surrounding the attack with some surrealistic embellishments around the edges of the narrative. A predominantly female cast plays a number of key figures in and around the administration of the 45th president of the U.S. 

Jessi Miller is suitably abrasive and comically crude as Donald Trump in a portrayal which chooses to simply present much of what he had said verbatim without embellishment. Matt Koehn imbues depth into a notoriously affectless Mike Pence as he stands between Trump and his ambitions. Selena Milewski does a strikingly impressive job of lending emotional weight to his performance in the role of a fly that serves as the conscience of a wooden boy from Indiana who grew-up to become the real man who served as vice president under Donald Trump. Milewski plays to the less comical end of things as Whitehouse staffer Cassidy Hutchison in monologue pulled directly from her recollections of the events. 

The show is presented as a work in progress. The three-hour length of the show feels quite a bit like a rough draft, though it’s understandable that the show would run a little long given the convoluted nature of everything that happened on January 6. So much of the recreation of documented conversations with Trump and his cabinet feels a bit too much like sketch comedy to feel terribly fresh. As a whole, Quasimondo’s strengths were clearly with the physical theater-style representations of the mass of people galvanized by Q Anon before intermission in the theatrical presentation of the storming of the Capitol itself. 

Quasimondo Physical Theatre’s Red, White and Coup runs through July 27 at  North Milwaukee Arthaus, 5151 N. 35th St. For more information visit quasimondo.org.