Trompe l’Oeil at Manchester’s Contact Theatre – review

At Contact Theatre, Trompe l’Oeil explodes like a madcap cannon firing random bursts of pink candy floss tunes – with more than a hint of crab apples, talking Russian bats and hyper-sexualised dogs.

In its surreal midst is a drag queen, Demi, caught in a tornado and trying to get back to Kansas but split between her budding love for a clean cut Conservative boy and the fever dream/nightmare that is Donald Trump.

This bold, bawdy, brilliantly bonkers musical hurls The Wizard of Oz into the Trumpian White House and invites the audience to chow down on the popcorn and enjoy the carnage like a visit to a Roman amphitheatre.

This is a hi-energy musical incorporating drag with circus spectacular and a degree of audience participation – decoding the many messages within messages hidden in the lyrics and on the back screen. In the world of drag, less is rarely more and this may well be the only convergence point for a drag queen and Donald Trump. Neither favour a light touch with the old panstick and both swear by a bouncy blow dry. Here, the commonality must end – as the feisty Demi takes on big Donnie.

Veronica Green commands the stage with oodles of charisma as Demi. She sounds great and brings genuine emotional range to what could easily become another parody character. Rip, her would-be love interest/horny dog is played with unabashed relish by Joe Pieri. Caitlin Goman is a deliciously horrible Trump, throwing tantrums and blustering around the stage in short pants, exuding a ghastly but strangely enticing glimpse of a world in where wee Jimmy Kranky and Nicola Sturgeon merged in a test tube with the leader of the Free World. Nathan Hobley-Smith amuses playing Jared Kushner as a hip-thrusting, greasy Elvis while Phoebe Garr is a Barbie-pink, vacuous Ivanka who nails her solo “Blank Verse”, and both are lively additions to the somewhat flimsy storyline.

The script crackles with wit and weaponised silliness. Jokes land sharply, then vanish like silent, malevolent bats as sentiment suddenly kisses you on the nape of your neck, as in the touching duet, “Hey Diddle Aye”. The multiple hidden lyrical tricks and layered wordplay do reward attention, but in such a fast paced production, they often get lost in the anarchic staging and onstage acrobatics and dance routines.

Visually, it is an absolute hotchpotch of ideas as trampolines, high wire bats, and outrageous costumes that give the general sense that this was most likely devised under the influence of a family-sized tin of magic mushrooms. Yet beneath the camp pageantry sits a serious plea for sanity and moderation in the increasingly bleak satire that is current American domestic and foreign policy.

This can make for a tricky watch: viewing a musical which was first devised in the disbelief of Trump’s first term in office, it can be nigh-on impossible to find humour in the events of recent months as his second term brings ever increasing chaos to the world.

Not every flourish lands cleanly, and occasionally chaos becomes clutter. There are also a few tech issues with the sound which hopefully get resolved, but when a show is this lively, a little excess feels less like a flaw and more like a bonus extra. Whip-smart, savage and buzzing with enthusiasm, the only real downside is that, unlike onstage, we are increasingly living in a world where Trump keeps threatening to dim all the lights and bring down the final curtain.