In my recent piece on rabid anti-Trump sentiment—a phenomenon that has only got more pronounced recently—I noted how much I was looking forward to seeing David Tennant perform on the London stage instead of playing the real-life role of liberal darling by reading politically charged-tweets on Samantha Bee’s TBS show Full Frontal.
I duly went to see Tennant as an unhinged womanizer in Patrick Marber’s Don Juan in Soho at the Wyndham’s Theatre in Central London. It was good fun, especially a scene presenting a very modern dilemma in which Don Juan offers his watch to a Muslim tramp if he blasphemes against Allah (he ultimately refuses).
But my night was spoiled by Tennant’s Don Juan pronouncing, “I’m not a rapist—I don’t grab pussy.” The reference to Donald Trump’s leaked “Access Hollywood” videotape exchange with Billy Bush got the biggest laugh of the night but I found it gratuitous and unfunny, a cheap shot for the cheap seats.
I pointed this out to a British theatergoing friend who sighed and said Trump references are obligatory on the London stage right now.
Not only is Trump the leader of the free world, he’s a free entertainment provider for UK creative-writing classes. Just like hyperbolic coverage of Trump is catnip for CNN and the Washington Post, he is being used by British theater for specious political and entertainment purposes.
Before Don Juan in Soho played at the Wyndham’s Theatre there was The Kite Runner based on the bestselling novel by Khaled Hosseini. From late January until early March, the cast spoke out against Trump’s Muslim ban at the end of every show.
They did so on the grounds that the plot of The Kite Runner—a boy’s flight from Afghanistan to America—has real-life similarities with Trump’s recent travel ban blocking migrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen entering the U.S.
But Afghanistan wasn’t one of those countries. So this wasn’t a Hamilton– Mike Pence situation where the cast were reacting to a real-life player in the political drama being in the audience.
Therefore The Kite Runner flew aboard the Trump train for vague newsy reasons, not because of an exact comparison with what was happening on stage. But hey, they got extra publicity from the Guardian and other sympathetic outlets which probably boosted the second half of their run.
Brits are even bringing the anti-Trump theatrical bandwagon over here. At the revival of musical blockbuster Miss Saigon, a West End transfer which recently opened at Manhattan’s Broadway Theater, a line has been specially added to the show’s climatic song “The American Dream” in which the sleazy pimp character The Engineer shouts of his love for the U.S: “We can make it great again!”
The revival of a 1989 musical is inserting a reference to Trump’s motto to a scene set in 1978 to earn a cheap laugh! I thought Trump was a draft dodger—why on earth should he become part of a love story set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War? The joke’s on you Miss Saigon.
My theatergoing friend told me about “Top Trumps”, a recent festival of 12 plays about the President held during his inauguration weekend at Theatre 503 in SouthWest London by writers including Neil LaBute and Caryl Churchill. I’m glad I wasn’t there for that one.
I realize Brits must find it annoying that Trump is taking credit for Brexit but with the United Kingdom increasingly fractious and its recent EU vote dividing the country, surely they have more pressing concerns than contextualizing the US in ways that are about as inspiring as the average conversation in a student union.
Indeed, critics are getting as crazy as the creatives. A recent review from the London Theatre.co.uk website of Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman’s show Bat Out of Hell, currently playing in England, observed: “Shadow’s of Trump’s America loom over the stage from the towering monopoly of Falco, head of the secret police who maintains an aggressive relationship with ‘The Lost’, the leader of which is daughter has fallen in love.”
I haven’t seen Bat Out of Hell but I’m sure shadows of Trump’s America are nowhere near this production re-staging Meat Loaf’s songs.
The London theater scene is misguided to be fixated on Trump for three reasons. It’s intellectually lazy and predictable to try and compare any male womanizer or Middle East plot point to the President. Inserting a ‘grab them by the pussy’ reference is the antithesis of good art that should provoke and surprise, illuminate what’s going on around us in new ways.
It’s counter-productive since vast numbers of Americans go to London to the theater. Some productions are propped up by American students or retirees buying tickets. Too much more anti-Trump sentiment and some of us will vote with our feet and stop flying across the Atlantic.
Theater is also faced with thousands of people who watch TV and movies but think going to a play isn’t for them. Dumb political satire is hardly going to win over any new converts.
It’s also bad entertainment. Irrespective of the positive reception from London liberals, Tennant’s take on Trump hardly reaches SNL-levels. The point of the West End should be to get escapist entertainment away from the over-heated news cycle pressure cooker. We don’t need it re-heated on stage.
At a time when even The Boss Baby is getting parsed for comparisons with President Trump, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear some Londoner is dreaming up a stage version of Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel about tyrannical Emperor Nero, that was adapted into a memorable 1951 epic movie. No surprises which current political figure Nero would be based on.
But a line in a letter written by the dying Petronius to Nero in the movie perfectly sums up UK creatives’ current obsession with Trump: “Mutilate your subjects if you must; but with my last breath I beg you—do not mutilate the arts!”