Post by marion on May 26, 2022 8:27:18 GMT
I went to see this yesterday… how nice to be back at the OV after all this time! And they have redone the loos! Gender neutral of course but I only saw one guy braving the queue for the cubicles and fortunately the urinals are in a separate room! Well, enough of that!
This is the story of the next US election, by Mike Bartlett. Trump is bored, golfing in Florida. Biden is very doddery and decides to resign in favour of Kamala Harris. Trump decides to steal the nomination from Ted Cruz, and the campaigns begin.
I was a little disappointed with this. It is very much in the style of Bartlett’s King Charles III, in rhyming couplets with strong Shakespearean overtones. In this case it brought to mind King Lear and Julius Caesar with a dash of Macbeth and the Plantagenets. I liked all that. I found Bertie Carvell as Trump (with excellent prosthetics and wig!) very funny in places but also very hard to hear and understand at times. The impersonation was great but the stagecraft not so much. Tamara Tunie, the pathologist in L&O SVU, was excellent as Kamala, very calm and rational, and above all 100% audible! Simon Williams, currently Justin Elliot in The Archers, played Biden, in a way which was I suppose rather cruel but also funny, and I was surprised he was rather good because his voice on TA is so raspy I didn’t think it would be up to a theatre! Now The Old Vic acoustics are very good so I think the difficulty in hearing Bertie must be down to his projection.
The people who stormed the Capitol feature and are shown to have a very dark side but I could certainly have done without the interpretive dance by the guy wearing those buffalo horns.
So on the whole I would say it is good but not the sensation I was expecting. It got a good reception from the audience though, and people laughed throughout (usually when Trump was speaking really quietly so no wonder I couldn’t hear!).
This is the story of the next US election, by Mike Bartlett. Trump is bored, golfing in Florida. Biden is very doddery and decides to resign in favour of Kamala Harris. Trump decides to steal the nomination from Ted Cruz, and the campaigns begin.
I was a little disappointed with this. It is very much in the style of Bartlett’s King Charles III, in rhyming couplets with strong Shakespearean overtones. In this case it brought to mind King Lear and Julius Caesar with a dash of Macbeth and the Plantagenets. I liked all that. I found Bertie Carvell as Trump (with excellent prosthetics and wig!) very funny in places but also very hard to hear and understand at times. The impersonation was great but the stagecraft not so much. Tamara Tunie, the pathologist in L&O SVU, was excellent as Kamala, very calm and rational, and above all 100% audible! Simon Williams, currently Justin Elliot in The Archers, played Biden, in a way which was I suppose rather cruel but also funny, and I was surprised he was rather good because his voice on TA is so raspy I didn’t think it would be up to a theatre! Now The Old Vic acoustics are very good so I think the difficulty in hearing Bertie must be down to his projection.
The people who stormed the Capitol feature and are shown to have a very dark side but I could certainly have done without the interpretive dance by the guy wearing those buffalo horns.
So on the whole I would say it is good but not the sensation I was expecting. It got a good reception from the audience though, and people laughed throughout (usually when Trump was speaking really quietly so no wonder I couldn’t hear!).
Anymore to come?
