Theatre: The Whip
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (01789-331111). Until 21 March Running time: 3hrs ★★★★
There’s currently a “mini-boom in history plays and period dramas” delivering a cascade of “ideas, knowledge and energy” onto our stages, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. At Stratford, the RSC’s latest offering is The
Whip, in which the playwright Juliet Gilkes Romero builds a complex but ultimately compelling drama out of the passage through Parliament of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. Her focus is on the Whigs’ (fictionalised) chief whip, Alexander Boyd, who enters into a “tortuous process of murky compromise” as it becomes clear that colossal sums (£20bn in today’s money) must be found to compensate the slave-owners, some of whom sit in Parliament. It’s not a flawless play: it’s unwieldy at times and could use some trimming. But by the end it had more than won me over: a “textbook example of how to bring to light a fascinating subject while avoiding coercive simplification”.
The first half of Kimberley Sykes’s production is too “stately in its exposition”, as the characters explain themselves and their complex agendas, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Everything gels far better in the second half, as the personalities and issues get clearer and the drama turns from “stodgy” into pacy, “gripping and affecting” as it approaches the muddled conclusion to the anti-slavery bill. There are some “touching personal scenes”, and some compelling moments of political argy-bargy. The production also becomes rather gorgeous to look at, as the designer Ciaran Bagnall lights his attractive set “with alluring delicacy”.
There’s cracking acting too, said Michael Davies on What’s On Stage. Richard Clothier is “charismatic and constantly interesting to watch” as the conflicted and compromised whip, Lord Boyd. Corey Montague-Sholay is excellent as the “angry, intelligent” Edmund, whom Boyd has saved from a life of slavery, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Katherine Pearce brings “great humanity” to the part of Boyd’s maid, Horatia. And there’s 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”.