The 47th review: Bertie Carvel’s hypnotic Trump is a whirlwind, career-defining performance

Mike Bartlett’s new play, set in 2024 with Donald Trump gearing up for a second shot at the presidency, is a riff on Shakespearean tragedy with a punchy contemporary angle

Bertie Carvel as Donald Trump in ‘The 47th' (Marc Brenner)

As soon as Bertie Carvel’s Donald Trump drives his golf buggy into eyesight, there’s a sense we’re watching something remarkable. Buried under orange-stained prosthetics, Carvel is unrecognisable. Hunched and puckered lipped, he is the full embodiment of the 45th president – with rigid hand gestures, a blond-dyed quiffed hairstyle and all. More than just an impersonation, though, this is a whirlwind, career-defining performance. “I know, I know, you hate me,” Trump clacks at us. We might – but not for one second can we look away.

Writer Mike Bartlett has crafted an epic. Like his 2014 play King Charles III, The 47th is an imagination of a future world. The year is 2024, and Trump is having another bash at the presidency. But, while the play’s events feel eerie in their potential realism, Bartlett’s form is, crucially, theatrical.

Written in blank verse, it is a riff on a Shakespearean tragedy. Like Lady Macbeth, a disturbed Joe Biden (Simon Williams) sleepwalks as he mutters his worries about running for another term. When he gathers his offspring to decide which one gets the reins of his empire, Trump mimics King Lear. Only in soliloquy does Kamala Harris (Tamara Tunie) reveal her bubbling ambition to rise to the country’s top job. There’s a nagging feeling it’s all a bit too similar stylistically to his royal drama, but Bartlett knows it works.

Designed by Miriam Buether, the largely bare set is animated by flashy video footage projected onto a wide back wall. News tape plays behind Harris as she announces her side-step to become president to the nation. From the ground below, an assembly of US citizens sit cross-legged to watch history in the making – a skilled decision by director Rupert Goold that brings us right into the homes of the American people.

It is in his writing of the everyman that Bartlett’s drama takes shape. The inclusion of a brother (James Cooney) and sister (Ami Tredrea) split over their political ideologies provides a snapshot of a country divided. A nurse’s recollections of her card-playing mother who died from Covid is a stinging reminder of our current times. Still, Trump is so kinetic that it is hard for the others to get a look in. But maybe, that’s the point – to show his allure.

A play critiquing America and its workings staged in London can feel scathing when our own political giants currently have so much to answer for. But it doesn’t diminish The 47th’s mighty effect. So let’s just hope things don’t play out the way Bartlett has written them.

‘The 47th’ is playing at the Old Vic Theatre until 27 May