Trompe L’Oeil ✩✩✩
The Other Palace
Anarchic and already strangely anachronistic Trompe L’Oeil, (pronounced Trump Loyal) is a Cabaret-ish satire of the strange and unprecedented ascent of Trump to the highest office on earth.
Written by Henry Parkman Briggs and performed at the Other Palace Trompe L’Oeil can only be described as surreal. Except that it can’t. Because in the show anyone who dares describe the Trump presidency as surreal is immediately twisted in knots and turned into a surrealist sculpture of themselves. Literally. It’s that kind of show.
It starts with Trump (Emer Dineen) striking a Faustian bargain with a certain Russian dictator called Putin who has designs on destabilizing the West. In return for help in winning the presidency, Trump agrees to have a remotely controlled vice clamped around his testicles. The satire is neither subtle nor terribly cerebral. After winning the presidency Trump is unable to ignore the terrible hold Putin has over him. So we follow Trump through the COVID crisis and his tweet storms, with Putin looming in the background. An endless succession of sycophants try and fail to rein in his behaviour and end up being fired like a nightmare episode of The Apprentice.
In contrast to the Trump tumult, two bystanders meet and fall in love. RIP (Alex Wadham) is a Republican who supports Trump to begin with, and then has some serious doubts, while Demi (Dominic Booth) is a gender-obscure liberal who sees Trump as the cataclysmic end of days. RIP and Demi come to represent the USA torn apart by its political strife. Their relationship, when they overcome their prejudices, is an appeal for the nation to heal.
It is all played for laughs with the glorious Dineen delivering a rather good Trump impression wrapped in the trappings of an absurdist clown. Booth kicks up their heels as a hunk of a woman in Demi and Olivia Saunders has a small but spotlight-grabbing as inflatable sex doll-like version of Ivanka. Those are the highlights in an uneven production. Overall the show is better at poking fun than making a point. Somewhere in it is a message about the problems caused by vilifying the political opposition rather than trying to understand them. But confusion wins out over the conclusion and it never quite takes off. It’s hard to satirize something that felt like satire at the time. A challenge at the heart of the show is its timing. It is too far away from the emotions of the Trump presidency and not quite close enough to the realistic prospect of him becoming president again. It feels out of place. However, once we are through the Republican primaries it may all start to feel very familiar.
Funky Tickle Productions presents Trompe-l’oeil directed by Blair Anderson The Other Palace London 28 September - 15 October
Queerguru Contributing Editor ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA and cultural STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing, and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement, he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre, and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day”
