Driftwood review: Atmospheric but ungoverned debut play

Cat White (Ruby) - Driftwood - (Marc Brenner)

Caribbean heat bubbles through Martina Laird’s atmospheric but ungoverned debut play, set on the brink of independence for Trinidad and Tobago in 1962 and scripted in musical “Trini” Creole. An accomplished stage actress as well as a stalwart of The Bill, Casualty and EastEnders, Laird has a flair for dialogue and arresting scenarios.

Here, three members of a fragmented black family vie for advantage within the controlling structures of old-school British colonialism and newly aggressive, expansionist, frankly criminal American capitalism. It’s set, with heavy symbolism, in a “gentleman’s club” that’s basically a brothel.

Unfortunately, the play’s blending of sexual, filial and political themes is repetitive and inconsistent. Director Justin Audibert should have demanded at least one more draft before mounting this baggy Royal Shakespeare Company production, which opened in Stratford in April.

We’re in Alma, one of four “houses” owned by the complacently chuntering, white-suited Englishman Mansion (Roger Ringrose) in sweltering Port of Spain. Local woman Pearl (Ellen Thomas) collects the takings from his empire on footsore daily rounds. Her lubricious, light-skinned daughter Ruby (Cat White), implicitly sired by Mansion or another white man and born on the floor of Alma, tends to the thirsts and the other needs of the men who frequent the house.

This adds further queasiness to the lewdly proprietorial air Mansion projects over both women. An arrangement with the corrupt and comically flirtatious local policeman Seldom (Shane David-Joseph) ensures a steady stream of rapacious tourists. But reports on the independence movement led by Dr Eric Williams (later ‘T&T’s’ first Prime Minister) pour from the new radiogram in the bar, alongside satirical calypso songs about both sexual misbehaviour and the expulsion or old and new imperialists.

Martins Imhangbe (Diamond) - Driftwood (Marc Brenner)

Having lived in Alma all her life, Pearl feels it should be her birthright when Mansion returns to Blighty. Ruby, sneeringly dismissive of the “old woman”, has her own vision for the business. Then the son Pearl abandoned at birth, the rangy, swaggering Diamond (Martins Imhangbe) arrives. He has claims of his own to assert.

Given the production carries a content warning about incest, it’s not much of a spoiler to say his instant interest in Ruby is not strictly fraternal. The phenomenon of Genetic Sexual Attraction that can occur when separated relatives meet was also explored in Stephen Poliakoff 1991 film Close My Eyes but it’s a rare and tricky theme for drama.

Here it’s a metaphor for the warping influence of foreign domination. Family values get lost when humans are seen as a financial burden or a vessel for commercial or sexual exploitation. Abandonment and Caribbean machismo have given Diamond a twisted sense of what it means to be a man, and Ruby’s identity is bound up in her kittenish desirability. Tom (Ziggy Heath), a Yankee sailor fronting a hazily-defined criminal racket, sees an open opportunity in both.

Though vivid, the characters too often reiterate their wildly improbable schemes and desires. The emotional dynamics frequently turn on a sixpence, whipping from affection to scorn to lust and back again. Fair enough, you might say – that’s humans for you. But the twists are too obviously engineered in order to move the sluggish story on. Laird’s narrative ambition is impressive but overreaching. Attempts to link the black characters to a symbolic African mother-goddess, and to make something primal of Diamond’s shame, are confused and underdeveloped.

It’s well performed by the central trio. Ellen Thomas’s Pearl has an aggrieved solemnity and a wounding tongue. As Ruby, all eye-flashing challenge and feline prowl, Cat White both incarnates and transcends the character’s sensuality. Imhangbe’s Diamond moves from leering threat to touchingly broken need. The corrupt cop, the capitalist and the crooked Yank are more two-dimensional, perhaps intentionally.

Audibert’s direction features flashes of intensity amid boggy passages, though the rhythm and snap of the language does much to carry it along. Designer Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey’s costumes are evocative, her set drab. A mixed bag, then, but I’ll be keen to see what Laird writes next.

To 4 Jul, kilntheatre.com.