John Fisher Plays His Trump Card

It was good for a laugh until it wasn't. Like most Americans who voted, John Fisher expected the safe and sane candidate to triumph over the one who had so deliciously torn apart his fellow Republicans during the primaries. There was a play to be written, but not one about walls along the border, the decimation of Obamacare, or other political specifics of life under President Trump.

"What I found fascinating was the inner workings of his personal family life, which seems to be so much about what's going on in the seat of power," Fisher said recently. The result is "Transitions," a comedy-thriller-farce that Theatre Rhinoceros is presenting at the Gateway Theatre. "I don't imagine we can do anything about bringing him down or changing his attitudes, but by looking at him from a different angle, it may help illuminate things."

The play not only riffs on the curiously complicated relationship between Donald and Melania, but also their Russian counterparts in Vladimir Putin and ex-wife Lyudmila. The connecting figure between these two families is a drag performer named Ruby, inadvertently chosen as part of a cultural exchange with Russia.