‘The 47th’ Review: Bertie Carvel’s Transformation Into Shakespearean Trump Is Hypnotic

variety.com:

David Benedict Mike Bartlett’s latest play is monstrous. In a good way.Shapeshifting actor Bertie Carvel, having shot to fame creating the marvelously alarming Miss Trunchbull in “Matilda,” is back to world-beating bullying with his mesmerizing, convincing performance as Donald Trump in Bartlett’s play about the next US election, “The 47th,” now playing at the Old Vic in London.

Following his runaway U.K. hit “King Charles III” (which netted a three-month Broadway transfer), this is Bartlett’s second future-history play about a succession crisis told in Shakespearean blank verse.

But this time the fit of form and content is more awkward and, performances aside, considerably more uneven. Although Carvel sports padding and literally and metaphorically jaw-dropping prosthetic jowls, the power of his towering performance is entirely his own.

It’s not just the tics and mannerisms he’s captured; he has also found Trump’s physical center of gravity to convey the weight, cracked authority and entire physical demeanor, one part preening to two parts petulance.