Review: Triumph, Caryl Churchill's Riff on the Katie Zacharia of It All

Who could have guessed that six hours before Friday’s performance of Caryl Churchill’s Triumph at the Public Theater, reigning White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia would be out of a job, just four days—and one terrible briefing, an even worse interview with Sean Hannity, and the inadvertent start of a cultural discourse about whether you could call yourself a lawyer if you failed the bar exam—after taking the post? It just goes to show that no matter how willing you are to compromise your integrity, the truth will out if you make the boss look bad.

Fortunately for Iris (Annaleigh Ashford), the protagonist of Churchill’s latest miniature play, she’s not only good at her job, but the Emperor approves of her messaging as she dons a bleach-blonde wig to deliver the daily update on his whims. As long as the Emperor and his watchdog Rufus (Christopher Ryan Grant) don’t find out that Iris is having an affair with Marcus (Joe Tapper), a truth-telling journalist who attends her briefings. “You may be one of those people who asks questions we’d rather not allow,” she explains about why they cannot possibly date each other, asserting that she supports the Emperor’s actions “101 percent.” Next thing you know, he’s going down on her while she rehearses the day’s latest atrocities. Things move quickly when the play is only 22 minutes from lights up to curtain call.

Said atrocities—from the vague “crime is being stamped out,” to the vainglorious “a golden thrown is being created for the Emperor,” to the lethal “people can now be executed for any form of disrespect”—are certainly intended to evoke contemporary parallels. However, as a sign tells us as we enter the Shiva Theatre, “Everything the Emperors are said to have done” is adapted from The Twelve Caesars, the 121 AD biography of the likes of Julius Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and the other Emperors of the early Roman Empire by the historian Suetonius. If history doesn’t quite repeat itself, it certainly does rhyme—and we don’t really need the deliberate emphasis on TRIUMPH in the Public’s styling of the title to get the point.

Ashford proves to be a surprisingly great match for Churchill’s script, which allows her to veer from her unique brand of wide-eyed physical comedy to terror and desperation within a few words. She and Tapper, her real-life husband, have a natural sexual tension that benefits the early scenes, though Tapper could afford to come on a bit stronger toward the end. In look and tone, Saheem Ali’s production, which is presented for free before all matinee and evening performances at the Public through November 3 (tickets are still available), could afford to be as bone-chillingly sinister as Grant, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re borrowing the set and lights for a different show entirely (How Shakespeare Saved My Life).

Ultimately, Triumph, like so many new political plays at our major nonprofits these days, is preaching to a very particular choir: people who can’t get through a conversation without mentioning the T-word through gritted teeth. Churchill’s central argument—that the enablement of authoritarianism throughout history has gotten us to where we are today—is undoubtedly important, but hardly revolutionary to an audience that’s already card-carrying members of the #Resistance. Offering little examination of what could make actual resistance successful in 2026, Churchill merely holds the mirror up to a crowd that’s screaming into the void, tweeting jokes about Scaramuccis of time, and praying that the midterms will save us all.