Early in Mike Bartlett’s 2022 stage play, The 47th, the funeral of former US president Jimmy Carter is held at Washington National Cathedral. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton are all in attendance. Donald Trump is not invited but turns up anyway – and late. “He’s here to pay his disrespects, and use / A funeral for self-promotion,” Kamala Harris observes.
Life – or rather death – is about to imitate art as Washington prepares to bid farewell to Carter, who died at home in Georgia on Sunday at the age of 100. He was the longest-lived president in US history and the first Democratic president to die since Lyndon Johnson more than half a century ago.
