‘Nightmarish’ Trump comedy in London
A “nightmarish comedy” about Donald Trump, with characters including the US president, former FBI director James Comey and George W Bush, will have its world premiere at the Almeida theatre in London next year. Shipwreck is written by the US playwright Anne Washburn, who is best known for Mr Burns, a post-apocalyptic epic that revolves around an episode of The Simpsons, and for an adaptation of The Twilight Zone.
The Almeida’s artistic director, Rupert Goold, who will direct Shipwreck, says that “Trump, his family and his immediate inner circle [will be] either on stage or talked about almost incessantly” in the play. Alongside them are fictional liberal characters who are “wrestling with what Trump is, both politically and existentially”. Washburn, said Goold, also wants to understand people who voted for Trump and to give them a voice.
Washburn was partly inspired to write the play by a 2017 production of Julius Caesar at New York’s Public Theater that prompted rightwing protests over its Trump-like Caesar. Goold says Washburn became interested in “the difficulty of pinning down the contemporary political moment” and how playwrights could respond to Trump “when he changes every day in terms of controversy”.
The director thinks that while the unsettling, Kubrick-like comedy is steeped in US current affairs, it also chimes with a global political climate and will resonate for British audiences when it opens next February, one month before Britain is due to leave the European Union.
Rihanna, the new Barbados ambassador
Rihanna has been given an ambassadorial role in her native Barbados. The singer and entrepreneur will promote education, tourism and investment in her home country. Rihanna said she was proud to receive the prestigious title and was looking forward to helping “reimagine Barbados”. As well as her multi-platinum record sales, the 30-year-old singer was hailed for her “significant creative acumen and shrewdness in business” by the Caribbean island’s prime minister, Mia Amor Mottley.
Mottley said: “Rihanna has a deep love for this country and this is reflected in her philanthropy, especially in the areas of health and education. She also shows her patriotism in the way she gives back to this country and continues to treasure the island as her home.”
Already a cultural ambassador for Barbados, Rihanna’s expanded role reflects her “global influence across a much broader range of areas”. Motley also noted her significant charitable contributions at home and abroad.
“I couldn’t be more proud to take on such a prestigious title in my home country,” Rihanna said. “Every Barbadian is going to have to play their role in this current effort, and I’m ready and excited to take on the responsibility. I look forward to working with Prime Minister Mottley and her team to reimagine Barbados.”
Historians to remake Henry VIII’s tent
Tudor monarchs did not travel light. Vast tents — with great halls and multiple chambers, sumptuous furniture and fabrics of gold and velvet — used to accompany them on their journeys to far-flung areas of the realm, and even to battlefields. But not a single remnant of these extraordinary displays of wealth and power has survived, and little, if any, research has been done on their design. Now Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) has launched an ambitious project to reconstruct a huge section of one of Henry VIII’s tents, an edifice whose spectacular appearance is hinted at by a surviving design in the British Library. Covered in exquisite red cloth, it is decorated with Tudor roses and has tent poles topped by “king’s beasts”, including heraldic antelopes.
Charles Farris, a research associate on the project, entitled Portable Palaces: Royal Tents and Timber Lodgings 1509-1603 and supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, said the reconstruction would explore how multi-compartmental tents were put together.
