The President (Sydney Theatre Co) ★★★★

Written by Thomas Bernhard. Translated by Gitta Honegger. Sydney Theatre Company. 13 Apr – 19 May, 2024.

Olwen Fouéré and Hugo Weaving star as fascists on the verge of a nervous breakdown in the mesmerising The President, that peaks behind the heavily armed barriers to watch a married couple wrestle with the world they have created.

The President is a proverbial game of two halves. In Act One, Fouéré’s First Lady prepares to attend another in a long line of funerals she’s had to attend thanks to the anarchists who are terrorising the unnamed nation which she and The President (Weaving) rule over. The President is in the bathroom, bathing and having a massage, after a near-miss assassination attempt. But the First Lady is less concerned about that than she is about the death of her beloved dog – who had a heart attack during the commotion. As she is attended by her maid Mrs Frolick (an outstanding Julia Forsyth), she descends into barely controlled madness.

In Act Two, The President has gone to Portugal with his lover, a much younger actress (Kate Gilmore). Bored of ruling such a small nation, he bemoans his life. He was born to rule greater places, to control greater things. His narcissism on full show in front of his hosts and lover, his denial can’t hold out forever.

The unusual structure of The President puts the two leads together on stage for a single scene, a handover between two mammoth monologues. As both characters spout forth non-stop they exhibit similar ticks – from a stubborn denial of the world around them, to the repetition of words and phrases. While the First Lady’s mind seems to be stuck in a loop of paranoia and repression, The President’s ego is constantly stroking itself, trying to convince himself that what he says is true.

Around them, a cast of characters perform a near-silent comedy. Rolling eyes, scurrying around, bowing and scraping and trying to avoid their master’s wrath. The rants may be monotonous for the audience, but for the staff they are all too familiar.

It requires a degree of patience to filter your way through the roundabout of language to find the meanings in the script – and I suspect for many it will be too much. You need to listen through the wall of noise coming at you, to divine the real character of these people. This is not a short play, and those buying tickets just to see Hugo Weaving have to wait a while. When he arrives his magnetism is dynamic, but even his rich voice and mannerisms can only carry you so far through the text. Fouéré does an excellent job of balancing the First Lady’s mania, never so intense it becomes unbearable, but clearly heightened and brittle.

Designer Elizabeth Gadsby places the actors in a three sided glass box, a symbol of their fragility. Lights by Sinead Mckenna and sound by Stefan Gregory assault the audience between scenes, guaranteeing you haven’t drifted off. 

The show ends with an unexpected, well ‘twist’ isn’t the right word, but an unusual finale that shocks and delights. Does it add much to the narrative? Maybe not. It does end the evening with a smile though.

Both The President and First Lady are vile, but intriguing characters and their unfiltered monologues are sometimes grating if you can’t find a way to navigate their rhythms. There’s a sweet treat at the end of this theatrical meal, but you’ll have to eat all your vegetables first before you can enjoy it.