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A country house comedy about the legacy of slavery? That’s about the shape of Winsome Pinnock’s slight but punchy new play, which also toys with the tropes of the ghost story. Pinnock confronts current hot-button issues around the Transatlantic slave trade - inherited responsibility, the erasure of narratives and the concept of restitution - head on, and with humour. Her script is marred by excessive exposition, while Miranda Cromwell’s production features three broad but enjoyable performances from Cherrelle Skeete, Rakie Ayola and Sylvestra Le Touzel.
We’re in grand but crumbling Harford Hall whence historian Abi (Ayola) and her protégé Marva (Skeete) have been summoned to examine – and possibly to authenticate – six newly discovered 18th century ledgers. These relate to the farm in Jamaica which furnished the fortune that built the house, and they feature human chattels alongside livestock. There are anomalies amid the staid entries: a mystery over the death of a firstborn child; references to the brutal punishment of an enslaved woman, Black Sarah; a missing page.
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Pinnock confronts the whataboutery that informs so much discourse from the right about slavery. Abi’s family were Nigerian royalty who facilitated the transatlantic traffic. Fen (Le Touzel) has only inherited the Hall because part of the ceiling collapsed and killed her twin brother, the last of a long line of men called Henry Harford: should she be responsible for the sins of the male ancestors who glower down from the walls?
There are intriguing twists in the narrative. Abi and Fen studied in Oxford at the same time: Fen was an art student in a punk band, Abi a history student in an art-pop outfit that did musical collages of Frantz Fanon’s philosophy. Both pretended to be less privileged than they actually were. (Gamely, Le Touzel gives a drunken rendition of a cockney Oi number called See You Next Tuesday You C***.)
Having profited from slavery, the third Henry Harford allied himself with abolitionists on his return from Jamaica. Marva’s surname is also Harford, and her vanished electrician grandfather Melvin believed the family were descended from children sired by rape on enslaved women. Or were they “only” given their owner’s name? There is a “blackamoor statue” in the basement, which the (white) Harford family nicknamed “Melvin”…
Pinnock asks fascinating questions about whose narrative should be believed, and whether we are prisoners of history. Chance and choice play a huge role in the stories we tell ourselves: the ledgers were only discovered by accident, and Melvin’s letters to the Harfords demanding a share of inheritance have gone missing. One academic error can have massive ramifications.
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And privilege is indeed relative: Fen, who amusingly considers herself an “outsider”, can only keep the Hall going with an annual festival and film shoots. A bodice-ripping show called The Parlourmaid - a thinly veiled Bridgerton - was shot in the Large Study, which is smaller than the Small Study (Henry Harford III “had a sense of humour”, Fen says). A rapper, deliciously named Phallus-E, is making a video in the garden. (“Oh no, he’s in the fountain!”) The house will likely end up with the National Trust, who will have to deal with its thorny history.
For all the script’s wit and cleverness, plot points are heavily underscored. Issues for debate tend to be flagged up early and trundle laboriously into view. Ayola is crisp and alert as Abi but compelled to go way over the top in the scene dealing with the ledger’s missing page. Skeete brings a nice impetuousness to the larger-than-life Marva. Le Touzel has spent much of her career sending up her own plummy accent and patrician face, and she’s very good at it – her Fen is hilarious.
Jon Bausor’s traverse-stage set is a witty assemblage of picture frames, secret doors and decayed cornicing. Cromwell’s production has a hectic energy designed to carry us over the flaws. The Authenticator packs a lot into less than 90 minutes. But, perhaps aptly for a play about disputed history, it feels like quite a lot is skimmed over, simplified, or just left out.
To 9 May, nationaltheatre.org.uk.
