Writer: Mike Bartlett
Director: Rupert Goold
As the behaviour of British politicians edges towards that seen on soap operas, it surprising that we haven’t seen how Shakespearian American politics has become in the last few years. Mike Bartlett imagines what America will look like in 2024 and sets it all to iambic pentameter. Throwing in allusions to Julius Caesar, King Lear and Macbeth, the fight for the ‘Oval Crown’ at the next presidential election is an intriguing battle royale.
The major players in this tragedy are, of course, Trump, Biden and Kamala Harris. Trump – an unrecognisable Bertie Carvel – starts proceedings by driving a golf cart onto stage. Retirement hasn’t softened him, and he’s not lost to reality like King Lear. But like Shakespeare’s tragic character he decides which of his three children will inherit his wealth. Donald Jnr is too sycophantic and Eric is just too inadequate to lead the family. So Trump confers power onto Ivanka, cool and calculating like a mixture of Goneril and Regan (rather than Reagan).
Biden is another Lear, but sleepwalks the White House like a Lady Macbeth, not sure that he’s up to the fight that is to come. Trump has whipped up the mob like a Mark Anthony and has pushed Ted Cruz, the official contender, aside. Biden cannot compete and so bestows his fragile crown onto Kamala Harris, a politician weakened by her commitment to decency and democracy like a Brutus.
Carvel – in what must be a role of a lifetime – first plays Trump for laughs, getting the voice, the tilt of the head and the position of the hands all down perfectly. But Carvel also shows how powerful Trump is, and what a threat he could be to America if he were to run again. Occasionally, the iambic meter, mostly blank verse flourishing with internal rhymes and half rhymes, gives Trump a poetic nature that he lacks in real life, but crucially Carvel manages to retain the grotesque in his character.
Harris is played by Tamara Tunie, and the resemblance and the intonation are uncanny. Harris battles against action and inaction like a modern day Hamlet, and while she may not have flaws of the other characters, Tunie’s portrayal is utterly convincing. Lydia Wilson is Ivanka, dressed in pink trouser suits and high red heels. Wilson is careful not to exaggerate Ivanka’s mannerisms, but this does mean that sometimes she is flat compared to the others on stage who are shouting and grandstanding. But it is the quiet ones that you have to watch.
James Garnon plays Ted Cruz as if Leonardo DiCaprio were playing him, all wide smiles and laughing eyes, and Jenni Maitland almost steals the show playing Cruz’s wife Heidi as if she were the soothsayer in Julius Caesar, her scene seeming to put in place the play’s narrative. Simon Williams is a suitably scatty Biden.
With so much going on in the first half, it’s inevitable that the tension slips in the second. Bartlett’s handling of the days leading up to the election occasionally lapse into sentimental speeches, and political arguments become a little too simplistic. And the bloody Shakespearian finale fails to materialise and, instead the end is perhaps only too real.
Miriam Buether’s set is wide and deep, helping to bring a feeling of grandeur to the messy world of politics and demagogy, although its revolving stage is underused. Orgies of dissent led appropriately by a man dressed as a shaman like the QAnon one that stormed the Capitol, look terrifying, helped by Lynne Page’s movement and Adam Cork’s score. Rupert Goold’s direction is slick and not a minute is wasted.
With Cock already showing at the Ambassadors, and the brand new Scandaltown about to open at the Hammersmith Lyric, Mike Bartlett is in danger of ruling London’s Theatreland like a dictator runs an empire. But if Scandaltown is as good as The 47th, there will be no uprisings in the West End just yet.
Runs until 28 May 2022
