Although principally set in 2000, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning 2015 play anticipated Donald Trump’s presidency with its portrayal of a divided, frustrated and disfranchised community in the deindustrialising city of Reading, Pennsylvania. With Trump campaigning for a second term, the Royal Exchange’s revival is timely. Jade Lewis’s production ultimately presents a chilling vision of how job insecurity can destroy one’s sense of self and lead to the poisonous othering stoked by Trump.
The stage design by Good Teeth studio has huge slabs suspended from the rafters, powerfully suggesting an industrial landscape hoisted away overnight. This in effect is what happens to the play’s steelworkers who, amid a dispute with management over pay cuts, are locked out of their plant, with their machines and jobs destined for Mexico as a result of the contentious North American Free Trade Agreement whose renegotiation was a Trump campaign pledge.
