Last month, in D.C., I saw a re-staging of a 2016 play that is a thinly veiled study of Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign. The play is called “Vicuña” — a reference to a rare Andean ‘camelid’...a cousin of the llama. The play is a very dark drawing room comedy/drama, taking place almost entirely in the fitting room of a renowned bespoke tailor who reluctantly agrees to make a spectacular suit to be worn at a candidate debate by the race-baiting, erratic, wealthy businessman Republican candidate, played by John de Lancie, known to many for his role as “Q” on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The chosen fabric for this magnificent suit: Vicuña.
The tailor (Brian George, notable for his role as Babu Bhatt on Seinfeld) is an accented Iranian immigrant — revealed eventually to be a Jewish refugee — who, because of his age requires the assistance of an apprentice, an Iranian-American who is the son of the tailor’s former partner, a Muslim. Much of the play is a duel of wits between the apprentice (played by Haaz Sleiman, veteran of many TV roles and the Academy Award nominated film “The Visitor”), the ghastly Republican candidate, and his daughter (strong, young stage actress, Laura C. Harris), who is devoted but deeply conflicted.
The re-staging (re-titled “Vicuña & The American Epilogue”) has a new final scene, which looks back on what happened after the Republican won the race. it’s very disturbing, as the other characters describe the ways they were tortured or hid and how each died, along with the country they had embraced. This last scene is said to be inspired by an assault on the playwright (Jon Robin Baitz) on the even of Trump’s inauguration — but it goes well beyond that to predict the collapse of American democracy to a fascist mob.
Hopefully, that part of the play does not prove prescient, but in another way, the play was amazingly prescient — almost to the point of making me wonder how much the playwright was just being dramatic and how much he might have been fictionalizing something he heard L.A. society people speculating about while gossipping during the summer of 2016.
In the second act of the play, the Republican, Kurt Seaman (this leads to some good gags) blows up efforts by his daughter to make him seem reasonable and respectful towards women. This leads to a powerful Republican woman Senator (veteran stage actor Kimberly Schraf) to meet with him at the tailor’s shop, to discuss a deal to get him to throw the election — tanking the upcoming debate. The Senator starts at $2.5 billion, but Seaman pushes her to $5 billion, plus some pricey knick-knacks.
Without destroying the entire thread of the show, this deal turns out to be the thing Seaman uses to mobilize his mob and win control of the country (it’s not entirely clear if he wins the election — likely — or leads a rebellion).
This deal though, turns out to be mirrored by actual events, revealed in the new article in The Atlantic: “God’s Plan for Mike Pence.”
Per the article, after the Access Hollywood tape release, Pence let the RNC know that he was ready to step in to head the ticket in November. That set in motion events which included billionaire Republicans reaching to a Trump associate and discussing what Trump’s price might be to withdraw. Their agreed price: $800 million. Cheap.
Actually -- probably not just cheap. Based on what we glean Putin offered, and what the Presidency promised for a mindblowingly corrupt Trump and Kushner, their offer was pitifully low. Maybe, they shold have gone as hgh as $5 billion. Or, given how it turns out in the play, maybe we’re lucky that Trump won the way he did, without the mobs in the streets.
From the article:
"Already, Reince Priebus’s office was being flooded with panicked calls from GOP officials and donors urging the RNC chairman to get rid of Trump by whatever means necessary. One Republican senator called on the party to engage emergency protocols to nominate a new candidate. RNC lawyers huddled to explore an obscure legal mechanism by which they might force Trump off the ticket. Meanwhile, a small group of billionaires was trying to put together money for a “buyout”—even going so far as to ask a Trump associate how much money the candidate would require to walk away from the race. According to someone with knowledge of the talks, they were given an answer of $800 million. (It’s unclear whether Trump was aware of this discussion or whether the offer was actually made.) Republican donors and party leaders began buzzing about making Pence the nominee and drafting Condoleezza Rice as his running mate."
Amazing how reality followed fiction, unfolding that way, even as the play was in its L.A. premiere in late October, 2016.
Of course, at the time, I was noting Trump as an evil version of the character Chance the Gardener, a.k.a. Chauncey Gardiner, from Jerzy Kosiński’s brilliantly funny screenplay in the film “Being There.”
I’m still wondering if this is all real, or even just one unlikely, macabre stream of reality that we’ve been thrust into. It seems more like a playwright’s fevered imagination than reality.