In the tradition of Spalding Gray, Mike Daisey is a monologist who deftly intertwines personal narratives with socio-political issues coursing through the country. In “The Last Cargo Cult,” he interwove a trip to a remote South Pacific island with a searing indictment of America’s role in the global financial crisis. In “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” he played a lover of all things Apple who feels betrayed upon discovering the company’s abusive labor practices in China. Now, in “Trump Card,” Daisey critiques America’s oligarchy and the feckless political parties that he suggests have enabled the unexpected rise of presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump.The satirical monologue, which he will perform from July 24 through August 24 at the Public Theater, is a comeback of sorts for Daisey, who got into serious trouble when elements of his Steve Jobs piece were exposed as factually inaccurate and in some cases fabricated. Contrition for those lapses is expressed in “Trump Card” and may explain why Daisey plans to release his latest script for free when he finishes touring it himself in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., over the summer.When “Trump Card” was workshopped at the Wooly Mammoth Theatre in D.C. late last month, critic Peter Marks praised it as “scabrously funny” in ascribing Trump’s ascendance to a convergence of the malicious and the ridiculous in American politics. “The malice,” Marks wrote, “arises from a moneyed background with an ugly, allegedly racist, root system; the ridiculous emerges from the crass American populism of trends like reality television; and semi-comical figures such as Sarah Palin.”A couple of the more comedic arias in the monodrama grow out of Daisey’s fascination with Trump: The Game, an actual board game so simple-minded that he calls it “Monopoly for Dogs,” and the parallels he draws between the self-inflating billionaire and his early mentor, the flamboyant and controversial lawyer Roy Cohn. The monologist mines gold from these bullying personalities because they are so theatrical and larger than life, adding that it takes one to know one. As Daisey recently told the New York Times in explaining what drew him to Trump as a subject: “He’s an incredibly performative figure. He’s an entertainer and demagogue. I understand this because our jobs are actually quite similar. I’m quite different than Trump, but my tool set is not.” One might reasonably surmise that Daisey’s target is a tad too easy. After all, the airwaves are suffused with mockery of the Donald. But the monologist insists he’s not about to let his left-leaning audience off the hook, any more than he has let himself off the hook for the scandal surrounding his Steve Jobs piece. The Democratic Party has to take some blame because of its inattention to the white working class that has been so responsive to Trump’s ranting. “I’m always interested in skewering, examining and implicating the people in the room.” Daisey told the Times, “because they are the ones that showed up for the performance.”
↧