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LONDON – Donald J. Trump isn’t going to give up the limelight easily. But few would have guessed that Mike Bartlett would find renewed life on the London stage in his scattershot satire, “47.”, opened last week at the Old Vic and will run until May 28.
Why number 47? Because the game starts with the 45th president of America, who wants to rise to the top position again in 2024. Like his fondness for golf, his appetite for attention continues unabated. Bertie Carvel, whose portrayal of Trump is the game’s huge success, is first seen taking to the scenery in a golf cart: an impressive entry that starts the game high.
As a long singular complaining of “four years of solitary exile” dismounts to begin the conversation, the character before us is uncannily like the man himself and sounds good. Embodying a public figure 30 years older than himself, Carvel – clearly stuffed – captures Trump’s extreme arrogance and bullying alongside his constantly busy hands and that oddly gruff voice. oblique head and constant strabismus They are perfectly captured.
However, those waiting on board in the style of “Saturday Night Live”, which we are familiar with from Alec Baldwin, are waiting for a surprise. Within minutes, the audience becomes aware of a character, not a cartoon, and he is a character with a lot on his mind. The opening monologue depicts a vengeful figure who is absolutely aware of how he is being looked at: “I know, I know, you hate me,” this is what Trump initially states.
Promising “plans and intrigues in abundance,” Trump comes across as a Richard III for our time in an empty verse play with Shakespearean allusions like confetti. Bursted with resentment but mindful of his dynasty, Trump gathers his three eldest children to seek heirs, like Lear, to a political kingdom he won’t lose without a fight.
The game, to its credit, sees Trump in three dimensions, giving him a way with words you would definitely not expect from those lips in real life. As in “King Lear,” he says to Ivanka (the elegantly haired Lydia Wilson), a Cordelia equivalent who is reluctant to express the love her father should have known anyway, “acting shyly dumb is not for you.” And I laughed out loud at this Trump’s dismissal of Machiavelli’s “Prince” for so long—as if he were going to have ideas for a 16th-century political treatise.
When Carvel takes center stage, “47.” completely understands. The problem is posed by a rambling, shapeless narrative that soon loses its way. It’s as if Bartlett was so busy trying to cover all the bases that he left it too uninteresting. (Absolutely busy, With three games running simultaneously in London.)
The family drama, for example, gives way to a portrait of an increasingly turbulent America whose anger has only intensified since the Capitol stormed last year. Bartlett invents a new slogan – “America rules” – embroidered on the banners pouring from the upper parts of the theater to put us in a recuperation mood. Miriam Buether’s set itself is pretty plain: a blank canvas for a belligerent voter.
The imaginary 2024 presidential race puts the sleepwalking, sick Biden (voiceless Simon Williams) at the center of the scene, with Kamala Harris (American actress Tamara Tunie), whom Trump duly despised. “You are an ugly person,” she tells him. “I’m sorry, but you are.” In fact, Tunie is such an instantly classy and talented being that you wish more were given to him.
Alongside the characters we all know, Bartlett introduces some new characters, including Republican Rosie (Ami Tredrea), who mocks her brother Charlie (James Cooney), a Democratic journalist, as “desperate and corrupt.” Rupert Goold’s production elsewhere brings in a QAnon-style Shaman (an enraged Joss Carter) as a reminder of the darker forces that threaten democracy. Fluttering in anger, he points to a rallying anarchy also invoked by video projections depicting Ash J. Woodward’s evil mob rule.
Reuniting the team behind another game looking to the near future, Bartlett’s “King Charles III” This final divination exercise hangs when Trump leaves the stage. Its energy – however bad – is the engine that keeps it going, and I definitely voted for Carvel.
Trump needs very little publicity. But that may not be the case for Robert Moses, a Yale and Oxford-educated city planner and designer. He died in 1981 at the age of 92. His story informed Robert Caro’s extensive 1974 biography “The Power Broker” and now reveals a more fluid gameplay, “The Power Broker.”Straight Line CrazyWritten by British playwright David Hare, this narrative-heavy drama brings Ralph Fiennes back onstage as roaring Moses and is running at the Bridge Theatre until 18 June.
Anyone who has used highways and bridges in the greater New York area has probably traveled a route made possible by Moses, a very famous figure at the time. A visionary overflowing with ideas about how to reshape public spaces and the ways people can access them, Musa has drawn criticism. Although he was not self-driving, he was hostile to public transport, not to mention indiscriminate racism and disregard for communities displaced by the fulfillment of his grand plans. (One highway included bridges with deliberately insufficient clearance, so buses couldn’t use them.)
Hare chooses two decisive points in Moses’ life to tell the tale of a frenzied jumping ambition alluded to in the game’s title: 1926, Moses, age 40, proposes building two parkways to connect New York with Long Island. , and, after the hiatus, 1955. The idea at the time was to build a sunken highway that would cut through Lower Manhattan’s Washington Square Park.
Fiennes has enough barrel-chested authority to keep interest in things that might otherwise seem mysterious. You almost wish it The play and Nicholas Hytner’s ingenious production were longer and further strengthened the material. Enemy of Moses urban space activist Jane Jacobs (Helen Schlesinger, struggling with the accent) makes a very important speech at the beginning of the game, but this warrior who defines himself as this warrior doesn’t struggle much.
Other characters, including the various staff of Moses, largely faded next to the momentum that had built up as Moses began to collapse. “I’d rather be right and alone than be soft and with other people,” he admits towards the end, pointing to the Trump-like megalomania that brings piecemeal play to life, played quickly and powerfully.
47.. Director Rupert Goold. Old Vic, until May 28.
Straight Line Madness. Director Nicholas Hytner. Bridge Theatre, until June 18.
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