Review: Trumpageddon

How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways. One, parodying that Star Wars opening crawl has been done to death. Two, an impersonation of Trump needs to do more than shout "beautiful" and hit on women in the front row. Three, you can't include song numbers if you can't sing.

Four, if perhaps when this show was conceived, Trump-based satire could make do with ticking off the basics—small hands, orange face, creepy hands, dodgy relationship with daughter, silly tweets—that no longer suffices. POTUS moved way beyond a figure of fun when he, I dunno, backed white supremacists and authorised putting children in cages. Trump takedowns probably need to escalate accordingly.

Five, if the only marginally successful nod towards surrealism in the show is having a Handmaid carry the mic for a mock Q&A, then getting the costume right is probably worthwhile. Literally, people not being paid to be on the Trump protests made a better effort. Six, while we're on the subject of abusing women, is the biggest joke you could come up with about Melania Trump pronouncing "memorise" as "meemorise"? And, seven, how off-target can you get by going after the famously expensively-dressed Theresa May's "Primark suit"?

Simon Jay's Trumpageddon is unremittingly awful. Oddly, the only bit where this approaches something passable is an uncomfortable and unwanted date with an unsuspecting audience member. Having thoroughly lost the crowd and visibly given up hope, Jay lets his Trump slide towards nihilistic bitterness. It's the first bit of real satire. But hope died for us long before.

Eight: one of the Trump parody books shown here is titled "Shout Yourself Rich". Why invite such an easy comparison?