Review: RETROGRADE, Kiln Theatre

Not so long ago, in Obama-times, 1950s McCarthyism felt like an aberration, a mass psychosis that overtook a nation as anyone left of Genghis Khan was marched in front of a kangaroo court (The House Un-American Activities Committee) and coerced to name names for an ever-expanding blacklist. It doesn't feel like an aberration now.

So it's timely that Ryan Calais Cameron's Retrograde hits the London stage (while his brilliant For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy is still in the West End) with the recent death of Harry Belafonte reminding us of how much human rights activists risked for standing up to the crazies.

This three-hander imagines a meeting between Sidney Poitier (25 years old, an actor whose talent is undeniable but who faces any number of obstacles to success in Hollywood), his nervous needy writer, Bobby and the fixer who does the studios' dirty work, Mr Parks. If the writer and the fixer are to get their movie made, it'll make the actor a star, but first they need to extract a loyalty oath from the black man and for him to denounce Paul Robeson, the soi-disant Most Dangerous Man In America and the hero of Harlem.

In Frankie Bradshaw's perfectly realised period office, the tension ramps up as the three men explore the options, argue over the stakes and ultimately confront the deepest core of their common humanity. It's a fast-talking, slow burn as we seethe with Poitier over his treatment, bristle with scorn at Parks' boneheaded racism and wonder exactly what we might do were we in Bobby's shoes. It's a scorching 20th century morality play with lessons for the 21st.

Ivanno Jeremiah gives Poitier a quiet dignity at first, an incredulity at exactly what is going on and then a rising anger - there's more than an echo of Mr Tibbs' character arc from In The Heat Of The Night, one of Poitier's, indeed Hollywood's, greatest performances. That Jeremiah can evoke such a towering figure in culture without toppling into impersonation nor caricature, is a credit to both him and director, Amit Sharma. It's a thrill to see the man brought to life with such rigour and one suspects awards will come in due course.

The weakness of the play is in its two other characters. Daniel Lapaine plays Parks broad, a bullish, bullying bullshitter high on his own supply of egotism, bereft of the emotional intelligence and oily charm his job surely demanded. He never gets close to a read on Poitier, never uses any of the softer persuasive weapons at his disposal, favouring the sledgehammer where a scalpel was obviously required. Ian Bonar's Bobby just doesn't have enough to do, perplexed and frightened in equal measure.

Despite those structural flaws, the play's strengths demand that it be seen as a lesson in moral fortitude and as a warning from the past. It also stands as a tribute to Poitier himself (who died last year), a trailblazer for the many who followed in his footsteps and who continue to fight the battles he won. That such a sentence needs writing 70 years on from the events portrayed in this production marks the scale of the challenge then - and now.

Retrograde is at Kiln Theatre until 27 May

Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

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