This will hurt

When reviewers call a work ‘important’ they mean ‘boring’ and ‘earnest’. And in those terms Shipwreck is one of the most ‘important’ shows I’ve ever seen. It’s not a play but a series of monologues and conversations spoken by a group of American liberals stuck overnight in a rural farmhouse. ‘It’s a red zone,’ they shudder when they learn that they’re in a Republican county. They pass the night carping loftily about the faults of Trump’s campaign and of his presidency between the inauguration and his dismissal of James Comey on 9 May 2017. It’s unclear why this arbitrary time period is chosen, and by ignoring more recent events the characters make themselves seem ill-informed and detached from reality. A political show should stay in touch with politics. None of the characters has any dramatic purpose other than to wallop Trump and co. by asking each other loaded questions. How much does he lie? Might his presidency be likened to the mass suicide at Jonestown in 1978? Has Ivanka overplayed her role as a mom? Is Trump the Antichrist?

The gang of right-on chums are worried that their social group includes no ethnic minorities. One asks: if whites are discussing blacks with no blacks present are whites implying that blacks are imaginary? Their overeducated pessimism is enlivened by disobliging attacks on women. ‘I have a hard time hating Ivanka completely,’ says a female character. ‘She’s an abomination before the Lord,’ notes another sister. ‘I think God hates Ivanka.’ They discuss Hillary’s ‘crimes’, including the alleged murder of 100 political opponents. ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ says one, ‘but in a way I wouldn’t put it past her.’

These think-tank scenes are interrupted by appearances from the hick farmer who once owned the property and his black son, adopted, rather improbably, from a Kenyan orphanage in the 1980s.