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Rockets and Blue Lights (Susan Elkin reviews)

Rockets and Blue Lights

Winsome Pinnock

Directed by Lande Belo

Tower Theatre until 28 June

 

Star rating 3.5

 

It’s very interesting play which examines the truth and complexity of the legacy of slavery from a kaleidoscopic range of angles. Structurally it reminds me of both Our Country’s Good and Tom Stoppard’s adaption of A French Lieutenant’s Woman.

Famous Hollywood actress Lou (Tiffany Ola – excellent) is back in Britain working on a new film about JWW Turner and his 1840 painting The Slave Ship – except that she feels the film should be a lot more about the kidnapped, incarcerated murdered Africans than about a white British artist, not least because we’re in 2006/7 and, funded by an anti-slavery charity,  the film is timed to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slave trading across the British Empire.

There’s a reproduction of the painting at the entrance to the auditorium, as well as historical information displayed around Twer Theatre’s bar area. The original hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mass. It was inspired by the utterly horrifying 1781 Zong massacre in which 130 enslaved Africans were thrown overboard so that the company could claim insurance. Turner’s painting is subtitled “Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhoon Coming On” and, given that it depicts only impressionistic fragments of bodies amongst the wind, waves, mist and panic, Pinnock’s play presents Turner (Paul Kristovic – impeccably nuanced performance) as a man of moral ambiguity.

It’s a play full of short scenes which shifts from film set  (Akeem Mauli-Nicol is good as the director) where the cast are doing an initial read-through to horrifying scenes which Lou finds very difficult to act because she  loathes what she calls “torture porn” and at one point turns violently on the actor playing the overseer (Matteo Caporusso – pleasing in several roles). The white version of events, Lou says, eliminates the many insurrections. These people were a lot more than mere victims

Along the way we see illustrations of how abolition didn’t “cure” slavery as we dart about in time. Decommissioned slave ships, for example, were an issue. And what were slave traders supposed to do once their living had been taken from them? Obviously the trade didn’t die overnight – it went underground and resurfaced in different guises. And it’s still with us. “We used to have slave boats. Now we have equality laws” as one character comments ruefully, implying presumably that had we not had the former we would not need the latter. One of the last speeches in the play movingly lists names such as Stephen Lawrence and incidents such as the New Cross fire  – deaths whose root causes can, arguably, be traced back to slavery.

Winner of the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award, Rockets and Blue Lights opened at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2020, directed by Miranda Cromwell. It  eventually, pandemic notwithstanding, transferred to the National Theatre, London, in 2021. It’s good to see it so competently revived now because it has a lot of important things to say.

On the other hand at nearly three hours (with interval) this production is  too long and the fractured story telling isn’t always as clear as it should be  Music by Isabelle Ajani is nicely composed but adds little to the narrative although it gives several actors the chance to sing. It was a treat, though to get a snatch of Joseph Boulogne’s music.  Often called “the Black Mozart”, he lived from 1745 to 1799 and was a prolific composer of whom we don’t hear enough.

Author information
Susan Elkin Susan Elkin is an education journalist, author and former secondary teacher of English. She was Education and Training Editor at The Stage from 2005 - 2016
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