Displaying items by tag: Mike Daisey

"Atlantic City is like a real life, 3D Bruce Springsteen song, and not one of the good ones. Something off Nebraska," controversial monologist Mike Daisey waxes in his new show "The Trump Card." Daisey, a master storyteller, made a splash in 2010 when his Apple expose "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" aired on This American Life. It remains the most downloaded episode in the show's history. It was retracted two months later when NPR discovered that some of the details had been fabricated. For some performers, this sort of public shame would be crippling. Daisey apologized and has moved on. 

As with his other works, "The Trump Card" positions Daisey at a long table against a black drop, on an otherwise empty stage. He occasionally reads his near two-and-a-half hour rant about Donald Trump, punctuating by wiping the sweat from his brow. Daisey fluctuates between an oral history of Trump, and his own commentary on the Republican nominee's troubled campaign. The genius of his monologue is how quickly he's able to include new and awful facts that seem to be bleeding out of the campaign everyday. While Daisey's contempt of Donald Trump is palpable, he doesn't shy away from skewering his smug liberal audience. He shifts in and out of the narrative, finding pit-stops and inventive metaphors along the way. 

Daisey holds his satire of the GOP candidate to a more intellectual standard than Alec Baldwin on SNL. Rather than bemoan what we've come to accept as normal, Daisey makes a case for the average Trump supporter. He even lectures the "American theater-going audience" for their elitism. He paints a somewhat bleak picture of the electorate, but that doesn't stop the laugh-a-minute jokes of this not-to-be-missed performance. "The Trump Card" is an illuminating and frightening look at how even if Trump loses, the conditions that made his candidacy possible will remain. Actors Elizabeth Ledo, Joe Foust and Steven Strafford will host a special Election Night performance here in Chicago where they will be performing parts of Daisey's monologues. 

Election Night encore November 8th at Theater Wit. 1229 W Belmont Ave. 773-975-8150.