The play is not an exercise in crystal ball-gazing, rather a reflection on the ripples caused by the Capitol attacks and the repercussions for American democracy...It’s Carvel who leaves the biggest impression, bestriding the production in a magnificent and grimly apposite fashion.
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Goold brings his usual sheen to proceedings, played out under an oval-ish strip of light, yet can’t hide the lack of meaningful substance beneath the theatrical polish. See it for Carvel’s tour de force, perhaps, but as Trump would attest, you can’t win ’em all.
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You can’t fault the ambition or the sheer craft of Mike Bartlett’s blank-verse drama about a Trump rerun against Kamala Harris in 2024. But despite an astonishing, hideously transformative central performance from Bertie Carvel as the tangerine narcissist, the show lands disappointingly.
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The writing shimmers with power: it's an analysis of Putin and every autocratic ruler, as much as the present dangers in the United States...It's this central argument, presented with forensic care that makes The 47th pack such a knockout punch. And Carvel's Trump, darkly ferocious, gives it its villainous heart.
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It’s an entertaining but uneven pageant held together by a barnstorming performance by Bertie Carvel, who as well as sporting a gravity-defying Trumpian hairstyle has captured all his mannerisms and tics.
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The script, best in its granular moments of comedy, blends billionaire pomp with political chicanery, dynastic family drama and blank verse...In its drama it lacks atmosphere and jeopardy, its pace slow in the second half and its ending flat.
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Carvel is the big draw here with another astonishing transformation...But as funny and compelling as the portrait is, it doesn’t tell us anything new.
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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.
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