Janice Okoh’s new play explores black experience in this country through a combination of humour, naturalism and fantasy that is becoming the hallmark of Eclipse Theatre’s Revolution Mix – a series of commissions highlighting black stories (here, co-produced with the Belgrade theatre). Its action is wittily set around a trio of tea parties.
The “gift” of the title is not a thing but a person. Sarah Bonetta Davies, as she came to be known, was brought from Africa at the age of eight and given as a present to Queen Victoria. Now 18 and newly married to James, a fellow African, Sarah is gawped at and condescended to by guests whose tea-table talk of “natives” and “cannibals” exposes a racism rooted in structures of church and state.
Moving to the present day, Sarah (structural engineer) and James (lecturer in history) have recently arrived in Cheshire from Chelsea, with their adopted (white) daughter. Neighbours Harriet and Ben, bearing gifts of gluten-free muffins, don’t gawp, but their “liberal” values soon dissolve to show that, if times have changed, prejudices haven’t (think actor recently on Question Time).
The “gift” of the title can also be read in an ironic sense as the present the colonies have made to Britain of their wealth and their people. The final, fantastical afternoon tea (cleverly linked to the preceding sections through Adrienne Quartly’s sound design) finds both Sarahs in the company of Queen Victoria, with contemporary Sarah (invisible to the Queen) trying to skewer the colonial enterprise.
While Okoh’s overall structure is effective, each section takes too long getting going. Consequently, the drama’s dynamic stutters. Nonetheless, the writing’s strengths shine through and are well conveyed by Dawn Walton’s adept direction and fine performances from the six-strong ensemble (singling out Shannon Hayes as Sarah Bonetta Davies and Rebecca Charles’s Harriet, tying herself in verbal knots in an effort to be politically correct).
