(Patricia Cohen’s article appeared in The New York Times, 2/28; via Pam Green.)
For the American premiere of “The Low Road,” a satire of unbounded self-interest and pitiless capitalism, the playwright Bruce Norris realized he needed to change the last name of his scurrilous 18th-century protagonist, Jim Trumpett.
What would sound like a heavy-handed jab at the businessman-turned-president from a leftist playwright actually wasn’t. Mr. Norris wrote his sprawling comic fable half a dozen years earlier, before few predicted that Donald J. Trump would one day occupy the White House.
“It’s not a play about him in any way,” Mr. Norris said.
Indeed, to describe Trumpett’s contemporary descendant, the bumptious head of TrumpettBank Global, the 2013 stage directions said: “think Mitt Romney,” the moderate Republican and former presidential nominee who is now running for an open Senate seat in Utah.
Photo: The New York Times
