The Art and Science of Trompe l'Oeil

The Full Story

What is Trompe l'Oeil?

Trompe L’Oeil is a French phrase meaning trick of the eye, or optical illusion. Coincidentally, when said out loud it sounds rather a lot like ‘Trump loyal’. Most people who notice this similarity would likely shrug it off and move on with their day. Henry Parkman Biggs, however, decided it would be the perfect title for a musical bewilderingly combining a satire of Trump’s presidency with visuals of Surrealist art, and also, according to the show description, a queer love story.

This show is exactly as strange as that sentence suggests. Entering the small studio space, audience members are greeted with a towering hot pink set, complete with a larger-than-life graphic of the Donald himself. American politics are briefly forgotten as the ensemble takes to the stage. The opening number has clear Cabaret influences - braces, French accents and Fosse-style dance are met with a distinctly queer sensibility. It’s a promising start.

(https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Review-TROMPE-LOEIL-The-Other-Palace-20230930)

Interview with the Author

So, in a nutshell, what is the story of the musical Trompe L’Oeil?

Trompe L’Oeil (an art form that literally means “deceives the eye”) is in many ways a modernized riff on The Wizard of Oz. This version of Dorothy - Demi, a drag queen - finds herself euphoric over the progress that has been made in America circa 2015 - a black president, legalized gay marriage and legalized marijuana! What more to want?! - only to get swept away into what is for her the Oz-like political landscape of Trump that follows in 2016, a landscape she cannot process.

How does the ultimate message then differ from the Wizard of Oz?

Demi’s ultimate lessons are not like Dorothy’s - she must realize that labeling things as dream-like or surreal only renders her and others useless - this is not an Oz she gets to wake from: the events, however bizarre, are part of her ongoing reality and she will need to accept that and fight for her truth to prevail - and in that to and fro between reality and dream - the ultimate question is Demi’s new reality the american dream?

How do the surreal and trompe l’oeil art forms play a role?

The dissonance she experiences in this process of discovery also provides an opportunity to reference both the surreal and trompe l’oeil art forms and to playfully bring Dali, Magritte, Escher and many other artists into the conversation.

How then are the songs themselves also trompe l’oeil songs?

As something of a play on Lewis Carroll’s poem in Through the Looking Glass where Carroll spells the full name “Alice Pleasance Liddell” with the first letters of each line of his opening poem (reprinted below), the songs of Trompe L’Oeil explore this idea more adventurously, placing letters strategically within the body of the song to create messages and/or images that give an underlying message. Because these texts are sung, some have suggested it is rather “trompe l’oreille” (“deceives the ear”) and in a sense - and at a certain point - that is true, but once one is looking at the text, it is very much trompe l’oeil.

Anything else for us to consider?

Well, yes - at a broader level, the songs are written in a number of ways to suggest varied approaches to writing songs - ways that go beyond rhyme, sometimes creating a space where the actual form of the song supports or provides further meaning to the idea of the song itself. The French “Is it Oui?” written in French Alexandrines, Trump’s “Magical Me” written in Seussian anapestic tetrameter are two examples. The back of the program I think illustrates this more ably.