The Whip takes a moment in British history that appears, on paper, to be an unmitigated triumph in ethical law-making: the passing of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, which outlawed enslavement throughout most of the empire. In presenting the political resistance to abolition as well as the hypocrisies, betrayals and appeasements that finally led parliament to legislate, Juliet Gilkes Romero’s play is not so much an act of revisionism as a dramatisation of a hidden history.
The biggest compromise came in Westminster’s decision to abolish slavery with the proviso that British plantation holders would be compensated for their “loss”. A shocking fact is given to us at the close of the play: that compensation, in today’s money, amounted to £20bn and was only fully paid off in 2015. The unfairness of an apprenticeship scheme in which slaves still served their former owners is also highlighted. Analogies are made to child-labour in Britain’s mills and, alongside these issues, the play alludes to the rise of women’s rights and the burgeoning suffragette movement.
All these strands jostle for space in the first half of the play. The early scenes switch quickly and appear transparent in their function to set up themes and characters, especially in the shouty parliamentary debates between the Whigs and Tories. While the look of Ciaran Bagnall’s set is sleek and light – a table or a cross is lowered aerially – the drama feels heavy and the pace lags.
By the second half, Kimberley Sykes’s production irons out these creases and becomes a riveting 19th-century political drama, full of pace, intrigue, tension and political machination. It exposes the duplicity of politicians, even those who regard themselves as idealists. There is Lord Maybourne (David Birrell), the home secretary who seeks to push the bill through but furtively admits to the existence family-owned plantations. Lord Boyd (Richard Clothier) is chief whip with reformist principles, but he, too, is sullied by self-serving ambition, as is the fierce activism of Anthony Bradshaw Cooper (Tom McCall), who calls for radical change in Britain’s “satanic mills”, but whose hypocrisy is laid bare – though this comes with a too convenient plot twist.
Relationships flare fully to life between politicians and below-stairs staff, and these actors give the strongest performances. Edmund, Lord Boyd’s charge, who he has saved from a life of slavery, is a complicated, angry, intelligent character, evocatively drawn by Corey Montague-Sholay. Katherine Pearce brings great humanity to her part as Lord Boyd’s maid, Horatia. And there is a magnificent performance from Debbie Korley as Mercy Pryce, a former slave turned activist whose hair-raising testimony of slavery marks a dramatic turning point in the play.
Mercy and Horatia are the heroes, not the men who push the bill through parliament. We are better off united, says Mercy, and the two women stand, movingly, as one by the end.
• At the Swan theatre, Stratford upon Avon, until 21 March.
