Trump futures?
Just back from a late preview of The 47th at the Old Vic.
Set a couple of years hence (during the next US Election Year) and staring the old favourites, Biden, Harris, Ted Cruz and, of course, The Donald with Ivanka. The Donald is a wonderful Bertie Carvel creation, with added prosthetics. Carvel’s creation may owe more to Alec Baldwin than the man himself, but masterful nonetheless.
I won’t plot spoil, but you may guess the tone from the fact that the whole play (by Mike Bartlett) is written in fine Shakespearean blank verse – with a few lines lifted from a multiple of plays. Trump starts as Lear, moves swiftly to Prospero, Marc Antony, Richard III, Richard II and many others.
Ivanka, for a second Cordelia, soon becomes Goneril and Regan in a single body.
The verse speaking is in fact generally good, and doesn’t, despite the setting, jar; indeed considering the last actual days of Trump’s presidency, presaging the narrative arc of this play, perhaps only Shakespeare could do it justice.
This is of course funny, in many parts, but also thoughtful and at times deeply perturbing. Could someone who so esteems Putin (as he is very recently on record as doing, despite, nay because of, Ukraine) so want to imitate that narrative arc?
It is, perhaps, sad that the stage Biden and Harris are rather more estimable than the real things. Overall a good night at the theatre, the audience’s wild delight may have been because cast friends were in, but was deserved nonetheless.