New RSC play to focus on slave trade abolition

Published: 7 December 2019
Reporter: Steve Orme

Richard Clothier who plays Alexander Boyd in The Whip Credit: Lucy Barriball

The Royal Shakespeare Company is to stage Juliet Gilkes Romero’s “provocative” new play The Whip which is set at the turn of the 19th century when politicians meet in London to abolish the slave trade.

Talking about the play, director Kimberley Sykes said, “the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act formally freed some 800,000 Caribbean slaves who were then the legal property of Britain’s slave owners. What’s less well known is that the same act contained a provision for the owners of those slaves to receive financial compensation from the British taxpayer for the loss of their ‘property’.

“In 2018, HM Treasury announced that the multi-billion pound slavery compensation bill, one of the biggest in UK history, had finally been paid off in February 2015. Most Britons including myself had no idea we’d been paying for this 182 years later.

“I’m a descendant of colonial slavery, so the row added further urgency and fire to my creative process in The Whip.”

The play discusses how the abolition of the slave trade could drive the country into economic and political ruin. Then two women forge an unlikely union and “fight their way to the seat of political influence, challenging Members of Parliament who dare deny them their say”.

For the RSC, Sykes directed As You Like It earlier in 2019 and Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage in 2017.

Playwright and journalist Juliet Gilkes Romero co-created Day of the Living which played at The Other Place as part of the RSC’s Mischief Festival in 2018.

She was the recipient of the Roland Rees Bursary 2019, named in honour of the co-founder of the Alfred Fagon Award. Her play At The Gates of Gaza won the Writers' Guild best play award in 2009.

Richard Clothier will return to the Royal Shakespeare Company to play Alexander Boyd. His previous work includes Mr Robinson in Terry Johnson’s The Graduate for West Yorkshire Playhouse and Leicester’s Curve in 2017 and Pill in Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures in 2016.

Debbie Korley, currently playing a US soldier in the RSC production of A Museum in Baghdad by Hannah Khalil in Stratford’s Swan Theatre, plays Mercy Pryce.

Katherine Pearce continues her debut RSC season as Horatia. She is currently appearing as Cardinal Pandulph in Eleanor Rhode’s production of King John, also in the Swan Theatre.

The rest of the cast comprises Michael Abubakar, David Birrell (Lord Maybourne), John Cummins (Cornelius Hyde Villiers), Nicholas Gerard-Martin (William Purnell), Nadi Kemp-Sayfi, Tom McCall (Anthony Bradshaw Cooper), Corey Montague-Sholay (Edmund), Riad Richie (The Speaker) and Bridgitta Roy.

Ciaran Bagnall is set and lighting designer, Nicky Shaw is costume designer, music is by Akintayo Akinbode and sound by Claire Windsor. Movement is by Coral Messam and fights by Kev McCurdy.

The Whip runs in the Swan from Saturday 1 February until Saturday 21 March 2020. Press night will be Tuesday 11 February.

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