“simply an unsubtle attempt at mocking the Trump family”
Everyone seems to be writing plays about Donald Trump at the moment. I suppose this is understandable considering the current situation. Mostly these plays seem to lack any sort of subtlety or originality. Despite this, I wanted to ensure that I kept my mind as open as possible while watching the People Vs Donald Trump. Unfortunately my preconceived notions were quickly proven to be true.
The play is billed as a political satire. To an extent this is true, however, it’s satire for people who have a very basic understanding of the genre. Satire works best when it is clever and manages to make a point using irony and sarcasm. This play is simply an unsubtle attempt at mocking the Trump family.
Structurally the play is chaotic. The first section before the trial is a random selection of imagined scenes which feel completely disjointed. It’s essentially just Donald Trump being horrible to lots of different people. The addition of a completely fictional character throws in even more confusion. Melinda Meyers is apparently the illegitimate child of Trump. She’s black and it’s a little uncomfortable that this is used as such a cheap feeling joke. The trial is bizarre, the entire section feels like exposition that leads to nothing.
Some scenes in the play feel completely unnecessary. I still cannot fathom why the scene featuring Carl Bernstein and Kimberly Guilfoyle was included. It almost felt as though the writer (Max Lopert) was just desperate to create a fantasy about them. As characters they aren’t alluded to again; the actors become different characters and we’re left wondering why they bothered playing them in the first place. At one point a ballet dancer performs for around two minutes. This is the only point in the entire seventy minutes where this dancer is used.
The characterisation, in general, felt shallow and one dimensional. Donald Trump (Matthew Shelton) does his odd hand gestures but that’s really where the similarities end. It was a struggle to see where the inspiration for most of the portrayals came from as they seemed almost nothing like the real people they were playing. Molly Merwin as Vladimir Putin was easily the best performance. Her portrayal of the Russian President continued to receive a reaction from the audience throughout the piece.
Technically it needs improvement. The use of a television screen is only effective if it works without fault and the scene changes are quite clumsy. There’s a little disclaimer at the bottom of the programme that states ‘Please note that this fringe production has been put together in only seven days.’ It’s fairly obvious that this is the case but it’s not one of the biggest issues of the piece. The entire text just feels confused. As an audience member I really struggled to work out what exactly they were attempting to tell us. If this is play is to move to a larger venue then the script needs to be drastically altered.
Reviewed by Katie Douglas
Photography by Mark Webb
THE PEOPLE VS DONALD TRUMP
is at The London Theatre, New Cross until 24th September
