‘The 47th’ Review: Bertie Carvel’s Transformation Into Shakespearean Trump Is Hypnotic
14.04.2022 - 00:49
/ variety.com
David Benedict Mike Bartlett’s latest play is monstrous. In a good way.Shapeshifting actor Bertie Carvel, having shot to fame creating the marvelously alarming Miss Trunchbull in “Matilda,” is back to world-beating bullying with his mesmerizing, convincing performance as Donald Trump in Bartlett’s play about the next US election, “The 47th,” now playing at the Old Vic in London.
Following his runaway U.K. hit “King Charles III” (which netted a three-month Broadway transfer), this is Bartlett’s second future-history play about a succession crisis told in Shakespearean blank verse.
But this time the fit of form and content is more awkward and, performances aside, considerably more uneven. Although Carvel sports padding and literally and metaphorically jaw-dropping prosthetic jowls, the power of his towering performance is entirely his own.
It’s not just the tics and mannerisms he’s captured; he has also found Trump’s physical center of gravity to convey the weight, cracked authority and entire physical demeanor, one part preening to two parts petulance. Together with an eerie mimicking of the sound and fury of Trump’s limited-range, sing-song delivery, the effect is not merely convincing, it’s hypnotic.Bartlett and director Rupert Goold set up laughs from the get-go by having designer Miriam Buether and lighting designer Neil Austin present a grand but bland Oval-office-like space, and then having Trump unexpectedly make his entrance on a golf cart.From there, Bartlett uses Shakespearean iambic pentameter to point up the disparity between petty-minded behavior and grandiose dreams of a return to power.
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