Bertie Carvel as Donald Trump in The 47th
(Picture: Marc Brenner)You can’t fault the ambition or the sheer craft of Mike Bartlett’s blank-verse drama about a Trump rerun against Kamala Harris in 2024. But despite an astonishing, hideously transformative central performance from Bertie Carvel as the tangerine narcissist, the show lands disappointingly.
The Shakespearean echoes – Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, Julius Caesar – are too pat, the dramatic events a rehash of the most egregious elements of Trump’s original campaign and his four years in power. Rupert Goold’s production is slick but also oddly weedy: attempts to capture the atmosphere of a rally, an insurrection or even a White House crisis meeting look thin.
