Review: Triumph (Almeida Theatre)
Review by Daz Gale
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Arriving at the theatre for a show beginning at 4pm is a rarity in itself, but to have left the theatre after watching the show at 4.20pm is practically unheard of. However, that is exactly what you’ll get when you head to the Almeida Theatre in the afternoon to witness Triumph, a play running somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes (but what’s a difference of 33% between friends?). Would the play’s title be a fitting description of the show, or would Triumph try and fail to have the necessary oomph in such a short space of time?
Playing for one week only alongside a production in New York, Triumph uses inspiration from Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars, focusing on Press Secretary Iris who finds herself falling in love with a journalist who is usually at the back of the room during her briefings. The problem? Keeping the Emperor happy. Set in an increasingly dystopian world, the Press Secretary cheerfully relays all of the information about the latest atrocities committed by the Emperor, be it the torture, punishment and murder of people or the many ways he is making everything about himself, including commissioning statues and being referred to as a God.
Sound familiar? Designed as a political allegory to where we are today, you don’t have to think much before realising this is a comparison to the orange wonder himself, Donald Trump. In fact, the title of the play Triumph is itself an anagram of “Hi Trump” (and with that in mind - hi, Don, if you’re reading this). Writer Caryl Churchill has fearlessly taken elements of some of Trump’s more unhinged and appalling moments and somehow amplified them. There are, of course, those who support Trump and those who see no wrong or danger in some of the things he has done - Churchill takes this aspect and runs with it, upping the ante to a crazy degree and still finding ways to smile through it, even when people are being brutally killed in the most shocking of ways all for the most minor of criticisms.
In her blonde wig, Iris (Kate O’Flynn) bears an uncanny resemblance to recent Press Secretaries, with the revelation her blonde hair is a wig in the story itself, another nod to the crazy requests from the Emperor. Even Churchill couldn’t have predicted just how timely and relevant her short play would be, with the news the “current” Press Secretary, Katie Zacharia, would be fired after just five days in the job. The fact that this happened on the very day I attended the theatre to see Triumph couldn’t have been any more perfect if it tried, with the shortest-serving Press Secretary in history (so far. Give it a week) coming on the day press were invited to review the shortest play in London, in the knowledge that she may have been replaced in the space of the twenty minutes we were inside the theatre. Given the story includes Iris believing she is about to be fired makes it all the more timely. Though it also grounds us - while we may laugh at some of the absurdity in the exaggerated dystopian story, the elements become less and less far-fetched as time moves on, with its believable quality making the story all the more terrifying and uncomfortable to watch.
It is impressive just how much Churchill manages to cram into such a short space of time, with snapshots showing the progression of Iris and Marcus’ relationship playing alongside various press briefings led by Iris, and concerns about her performance, sometimes concurrently. It was hard to believe less than twenty minutes had passed when the show concluded as it felt more realised and packed than some of the shows I have seen with a ninety minute runtime. Churchill’s writing consistently impresses throughout the show with its sense of defiance and fearlessness full of genius comparisons, moments of humour and others that will chill your bones.
Director James Macdonald elevates Churchill’s writing in an unrelenting pacey show that rapidly moves from one moment to the other, often with inspired results. One clever moment sees Iris in bed with Marcus, performing for the cameras as she lists the Emperor’s latest atrocities. The use of video in this production is also clever in conveying the performative nature of the story and the characters within it. The disguise Iris has to wear both figuratively and literally as Press Secretary creates a wild disparity between her true self, and live cameras capturing this heightens the impact.
Kate O’Flynn delivers a wonderful performance as Iris, showing conflicting sides to a complex character who has been thrust into a world she is increasingly uncomfortable with. O’Flynn’s ability to immediately switch between anguish and fear into her false, happy and seemingly unconcerned public persona is stunning to watch, with O’Flynn doing a lot of work in such a short space of time. Matthew Beard similarly delights as Marcus, with his playful nature offering a touch of humanity in a world where it is lacking, though his disregard for the Emperor’s wishes gives the sense this is one story where a happy ending may not be quite so easy. The cast of three is completed by Sargon Yelda in a brief but impactful inclusion as Rufus, offering a bridge between the worlds and helping to pull the strings that lead to Iris’ fateful decisions.
Billed as a grim joke about where we are today, the great difficulty with Triumph is how to react to it. Do you laugh at the absurdity of it all? Are you terrified at the very real prospect of the potential repercussions, or do you sit there perplexed at how that could even be a possibility? Packing a lot into a short runtime, Triumph is incredibly thought-provoking and impactful for those reasons. I would have been interested to see how much more could have been developed had it been a longer show, but the fact it achieves so much in less than twenty minutes is one of the more impressive feats of theatre I have seen. Perhaps not quite a triumph, but still a thrilling watch and one that poses important questions and really makes you think about where we are in the world today.
Triumph plays at the Almeida Theatre until 23rd October. Tickets from almeida.co.uk
Photos by Marc Brenner