The 47th

When I was in London in 2022, I just missed being able to see The 47th, a new verse drama by Mike Bartlett that imagined a Presidential contest two years later between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Interestingly enough, I was back in the UK when President Biden announced he was dropping out of the race, meaning that in some respects, Bartlett's play was prophetic. Of course, just like Bartlett's previous drama King Charles III, many of the details proved inaccurate, even if other aspects were bourn out by events.

With the real Harris-Trump race heating up, I decided to pick up a copy of The 47th from The Drama Book Shop. The play opens with Trump speaking a denigrated iambic pentameter, since the conceit here is--like with King Charles III--the imagined future is told in the form of a Shakespearean chronicle play. Lear-like, Trump tests his three adult children to see who loves him the most. (As in real life, Trump never mentions Tiffany in the play.) After Don Jr. and Eric gush about how much they love their father, Ivanka says nothing. This might appear to be a nod to Cordelia in King Lear, but then Ivanka delivers a startling speech:

          If as my father you know not my love

          Then words will not identify your daughter.

          Your rightful heir will never beg, but trade.

          You know my talent, and my promise, too.

          I'm grateful for all that you have bestowed

          And vow that I'll repay that loan not just

          In full but with my share of interest.

One thing the play got wrong was envisioning a world in which the 2024 Republican nomination didn't belong to Trump from the beginning. Instead, Bartlett shows Ted Cruz as the front runner and presumed nominee. Trump offers to endorse him, but once in front of a crowd, he starts turning people against Cruz, referring to him as "an honourable man" just as Marc Antony does of Brutus is Julius Caesar. Trump ends up with the nomination, and though Act II does feature a Republican Senator from Ohio, it is not J.D. Vance but Ivanka who becomes Trump's running mate in the play.

The play also features a funeral for President Carter, who is thankfully still with us and hopes to cast his ballot this November. At the funeral, Trump whispers into Biden's ear, "I know about Jill." This small hint worms its way into Biden's brain, leading him to sleepwalk through the White House like Lady Macbeth. One advisor even worries aloud that the President will not be able to debate his opponent in such a condition. The play has Biden not just drop out of the race, though, but resign his office entirely, making Harris the 47th President, and thus the title character.

After the Trump in the play lets loose chaos on the streets, he is momentarily placed in jail. Bartlett begins a scene in Act IV quoting directly lines from Richard II. Trump immediately renounces the Shakespeare, however, saying that sitting upon the ground and telling sad stories of the death of kings is for "losers" not people like him. The fifth act returns to King Lear, with a reporter appearing having lost his eyes like the Earl of Gloucester. Ultimately, order is restored, but the audience is left wondering if what comes next might actually be worse.

The 47th didn't get everything right, but in its broad outline, it is uncomfortably close to the election currently going on in the United States.

Tickets on Sale!

Tickets are now on sale for The Boob Tube Plays by Bara Swain. No, I didn't write any of these short plays inspired by television shows, but I am directing one of them.

The evening of short work will be playing at The Tank on West 36th Street at 7pm on November 2nd, 7th, and 8th. It will be in the same space as my own play Foggy Bottom was many years ago.

Each of the five short pieces, I Love Lucy, Folded, Wasted, If You See a Hyena, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, takes a different television show as its jumping-off point, but the themes of intimacy and loss are universal and shine through whether you know the TV show or not.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, the play I'm directing, stars Megan Greener and Nick Walther as two soon-to-be newlyweds on the night before their marriage. They end up having pre-wedding jitters triggered by too much Law & Order: SVU.

The evening is being produced by American Renaissance Theater Company. Tickets are $22. I hope you can make it out to see these fun and emotional new plays.

Mythic Collaborations

Mary and Percy Shelley have both made their marks on the theatre, she through the numerous adaptations of her novel Frankenstein, and he through plays like The Cenci.

However, the two also collaborated on a pair of dramas based on Ovid's telling of Greek mythology. For both Proserpine and Midas, Mary wrote dialogue in iambic pentameter while Percy supplied special songs in more ornate verse.

The plays remained unpublished during their lifetimes, but after Percy's death, Mary published her husband's songs as free-standing poems. Frequently, the two writers edited one another's work, but in this case their collaboration was much fuller. With Mary as what musical theatre artists call the "book writer" and Percy as the lyricist, all they needed was a composer to come up with a Broadway hit!

Interestingly enough, Proserpine tells the story of the goddess of spring being abducted by Hades, a theme also explored in the musical Hadestown. Rather than calling the heroine Persephone, however, the play had "Proserpine" rhyme with "divine." The first song, "Arethusa," is sung by the nymph Ino to Proserpine. Later, Proserpine sings her own song, beginning "Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth."

In Midas, the Shelleys take a more humorous look at mythology. The play begins with King Midas of Phrygia judging a musical contest between Apollo and Pan. Midas chooses Pan, winning a pair of ass ears from Apollo. He gets into even worse trouble by helping Bacchus find his foster father Silenus. The god offers him anything he wants, and Midas foolishly asks that all he touches turn into gold. Predictable problems ensue.

Both works date to 1820, after the Shelleys had already matured as authors. Sadly, the full plays are rarely (if ever) performed, but the songs have continued to enjoy a celebrated afterlife.

Blood of the Lamb

Yesterday, I saw Arlene Hutton's new play Blood of the Lamb, an eerie look at the human costs of legislators trying to extend state control over the public in ever increasing ways.

In a program note, director Margot Bordelon said that Hutton wrote the piece as "a work of speculative fiction, but it's grown closer to realism with each passing day." In the past two years, several states have passed laws controlling the bodies of their citizens with often draconian punishments, making Hutton's play shockingly relevant.

To say the play is about abortion would be inaccurate. The formerly pregnant character, Nessa, has already lost her much desired and anticipated baby before the play begins. Now, however, she carries the body of her dead child inside of her, and with a new state law banning medical procedures that could be construed as an outrage to a corpse, she is held in legal limbo in a Dallas airport.

With Nessa is a lawyer, Val, who represents not Nessa's rights, but the rights of her dead fetus. Given the severe risks of carrying a dead body inside of you, anti-abortion advocates' contention that they are "pro-life" seems a bitter mockery in this case. Proponents of "states rights" when it comes to abortion also seem in this case to overlook the rights of residents of other states to return to their homes without being detained and surveilled.

A feel-good play this is not, but it tackles some difficult subject matter with humanity and understanding. Even Val the lawyer is portrayed not as a clear-cut villain, but as a well-intentioned woman trying to do her job in a world that is looking ever more like Theatre of the Absurd.

Blood of the Lamb was commissioned by B Street Theatre and had a reading at Centenary Stage before arriving Off-Broadway. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out soon.

American Renaissance

I recently became a member of American Renaissance Theater Company. Last week, they did a reading of the beginning of my new play After an Earlier Incident, and now I'll be directing for them a short play by Bara Swain that will be performed in November.

The Tank will be hosting us as ARTC presents The Boob Tube Plays, five short pieces by Swain all related to television. The evening will begin with I Love Lucy, about two women who meet in the lobby of an OBGYN's office. It will be followed by Folded about a young man's search to know his father, Wasted about a family torn apart by Covid, and If You See a Hyena, a spoof on reality television. I'll be directing the last show of the evening, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

We have a great cast, company members Megan Greener and Nick Walther as a soon-to-be married couple on the eve of their wedding night. Nick read the part of Elliot for me in After an Earlier Incident, so I know he's delightful, and I'm equally excited to be working with Megan. Both have wonderful comic sensibilities that are perfect for the play.

We open on November 2nd, and have two more performances on November 7th and 8th. I hope you can come out to see it!

The Fourth Sister

I just got back from seeing Jez Butterworth's new play The Hills of California, a rather Chekhovian examination of hope, heartbreak, and faded dreams.

In Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Masha broods and lashes out, much like Gloria, played by Leanne Best in Butterworth's play. Masha's sister Olga takes care of the family, though she misses out on any chance for love, as is true of Butterworth's Jill, played by Helena Wilson. The youngest sister in Chekhov's play, Irine, tries to maintain a sunny disposition even as everything falls apart, rather like Ruby, played by Ophelia Lovibond in The Hills of California.

But what if there had been a fourth sister, one who actually escaped life in the provinces and finally made it all the way to Moscow... or perhaps California? This provides a departure from Chekhov's set-up, and the fourth sister in Butterworth's play is a looming presence throughout, even when she isn't on stage. Her name is Joan, and she is beautifully played by Olivier-winning actress Laura Donnelly, known to many as Amalia True from the television show The Nevers.

Why Joan has been away so long and is only returning to the family home in Blackpool now that their mother is dying is a central question in the play. Butterworth hints at the answer in a series of scenes flashing back twenty-one years earlier to when the four girls formed a singing quartet organized by their mother Veronica. Donnelly plays Veronica in these flashbacks, while the four girls are played by younger actors who blend their voices harmoniously in a series of musical numbers.

By the end, we do get a certain answer to the mystery of Joan's long absence, but in true Chekhovian fashion, the play unwinds anti-climactically rather than ending with a bang like Butterworth's previous play Jerusalem. The performances are wonderful, and the play is definitely worth seeing, especially if you long to see Russian melancholy transferred to a declining resort town in England.

Joanna Baillie's Circle

A recent issue of The Coleridge Bulletin published some new letters from Sara Coleridge, daughter of poet and dramatist Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I was surprised to learn that she was acquainted with the playwright Joanna Baillie, and the two had a number of friends in common.

I had known that Baillie frequently corresponded with the painter Thomas Lawrence and the writer Walter Scott, but the letters reveal that her circle also included not just Sara Coleridge, but other notables including the poet Maria Jane Jewsbury and the playwright William Sotheby.

Writing to Jewsbury on November 3rd, 1830, Sara Coleridge noted "Mrs. Baillie we often see and are more & more delighted with her" and that Baillie had "been staying a few days with Mr. Sotheby." Sotheby's play Julian and Agnes had been performed at Drury Lane in 1801, the year after Baillie's De Monfort premiered there. Both plays featured the same leads, the brother-sister duo of John Kemble and Sarah Siddons.

Two years later, Sara Coleridge wrote that "Mrs. J. Baillie has been at the point of death with a low fever, but is happily recovered." Baillie ended up living well into her 80s, and didn't die until 1851. She rose to fame after the first volume of her Plays on the Passions was published in 1798.

That volume included her comedy The Tryal, which will be getting a staged reading next month at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds. You can find more information about it here.