The 47th: Small Musings
I don’t know how much more brain energy I can spend on the 45th President of the United States. And I don’t know how I could even begin to entertain who might be the 47th.
The 47th entertains the 2024 election and who might run. As the play opens, we discover that Ted Cruz is the Republican front-runner for the Presidential nomination (okay, somewhat believable). Biden still hasn’t decided if he will run for a second term (very believable). In a strange twist of events, though, Biden decides to resign from the Presidency, making Vice President Kamala Harris the Commander-in-Chief (and 47th President…hence, the title).
When I heard Mike Bartlett was premiering this play at the Old Vic this Spring, my first thought was why he would want to torture us all so much. Bartlett, based on what I have seen of his Charles III, is striving to be a 21st century Shakespeare: he writes “history” plays in verse based on surefire futures. But still, recalling that collective feeling we had upon the election of the 45th President, we know that nothing is ever a sure thing. Bartlett presents the possibilities as he sees them. Take it or leave it. Still, it doesn’t put me any more at ease.
So it’s a modern-day Shakespearean play. Or at least, it’s trying to be. It’s trying to show Shakespeare’s timeless themes of power, greed, and what it is to be both a ruler (or “king”) and a human being. Shakespeare, just like the Greeks, wrote from the perspective of almighty figures: what must it be like to be them? But Shakespeare wasn’t really writing about histories for this reason so much as he was writing to cater to his patronage (the royals themselves). With this in mind, it’s giving me the ick…
How could American, conservative politicians not laugh at these portrayals? How could their liberal counterparts likewise not laugh, just as they laugh-cried their way through the Trump Era?
It’s this one that has me stumped. For what purpose? At the end of the play, Trump gets into a car accident that ends up being fatal. Thus, Ivanka (previously chosen as his Vice) is set to run. And we are left on a “the cycle continues” note. Well, yes. But power is not in the presidency anymore. Power is in the dissemination of ideas. The President is merely a platform on the way to all of the ideas that come after. Abortion restrictions and gun laws reach their climax after the Trump era, a full two years into Biden’s administration, and we wonder why?
That’s the history play I’d like to see.
The 47th ran at the Old Vic from 29 March to 28 May 2022.
