Presidential Suite: A Modern Fairy Tale

A young buck female lawyer with morality on her side takes on a wily old-stager willing to bend the rules. It’s a rape case and she represents a poor black woman, while he represents the woman’s purported attacker – an exceptionally powerful and rich white guy. Move follows counter-move, stratagem is defeated by stratagem. It’s all terrifically exciting and tense but then in swoops a deus ex machina with enough money to foil the bad guys, and suddenly it’s all over. Lickety split. The promise of happily ever after.

This is in essence what happens in John Binkley’s play, which is grounded in the story of French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged sexual assault of a black chambermaid. The play spends the first half sticking closely to the Strauss-Kahn story, imagining the types of negotiations which might have been taking place behind the scenes. But then Binkley veers away from the actualité as reported in the media and inserts an off-stage Fairy Godmother. If he had continued to stick to the Strauss-Kahn affair, a much more complex drama would have been the result.

The production is professional and pacey, although marred by some haphazardly applied American accents. Sally Knyvette’s fearsome portrayal of the Madame Kahn figure is undoubtedly the stand-out performance.

At its best Presidential Suite: A Modern Fairy Tale is a Brothers Grimm-like chilling depiction of abusive male sexuality and the ruthless chicanery of the law; at its worst, it’s Disney.