Theatre review: The Gift

Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park is about to get a London revival but before then the Theatre Royal Stratford East jumps in with a new play that feels very much like a British response to that play: Both deal with racism in their respective countries by contrasting a story from the past with one in the present, and tackle a very real and serious matter through the surprisingly successful medium of a sharp comedy of embarrassment. And if there were any doubt that Janice Okoh's The Gift was a British play, the action centres on three excruciating tea parties. In the first two acts two black British women, both called Sarah, living over a century apart, are preparing for trips to Nigeria they don't really want to go on: Based on a real historical figure, Sarah Bonetta Davies (Shannon Hayes) was a Yoruba princess captured by enemies as a child, only to be rescued and given as a gift to Queen Victoria, who considered herself her adopted mother (although she largely packed her off to be raised by someone else.)

Now grown up and recently married, Sarah is being shipped off by the Queen to Africa on a humanitarian mission (largely a colonial project to Anglicise the people,) with the added reasoning that the warm weather will help her persistent cough (actually a symptom of the tuberculosis she would eventually die of.)

Victorian Sarah is packing for her journey but even royal charities need backers, and in what seems to be an experience she has to put up with regularly, she's called on to entertain the wealthy Mrs Waller (Joanna Brookes,) who essentially wants to gawp at an exotic curiosity - an African woman who behaves like an English lady. When we jump to the present day, 2020 Sarah (Donna Berlin) is an engineer who's just landed a theoretically prestigious contract in Lagos, but one that nobody in her company actually wanted when there were more glamorous jobs like Hong Kong coming up (she suspects she got the job dumped on her by a boys' backroom deal, although it's never openly suggested that her race might be why she drew the short straw.)

More immediately, she and her family are house-sitting for a friend in Cheshire, where the fact that they have a white adopted daughter has already drawn racist responses, with the police having been called on her husband James (Dave Fishley.) The play's undoubted centrepiece is the uncomfortably hilarious cringe comedy when their new neighbours (Rebecca Charles and Richard Teverson) come round with muffins to clear the air and instead dig themselves into ever-deeper holes while James trolls them.

The first two acts take up the majority of the play (the interval doesn't come until 1 hour 45 minutes in so plan your pee breaks accordingly) and are undoubtedly the most memorable thing about Dawn Walton's production. But its heart is in the almost postscript-like, surreal final act (its dreamlike nature making sense of Simon Kenny's all-white, almost abstract set,) in which 19th century Sarah has tea with her "mother" Queen Victoria (Brookes,) while a time-travelling 21st century Sarah whispers in her ear about something she wants her to do. As good as the two comic acts are, there's something very satisfying in this final one tying up the themes Okoh has been setting up: In the first act much of the comedy comes from Berlin as a maid Sarah is attempting to teach etiquette, which is ironic in the context of the character she plays for the rest of the play, who views Sarah's attempts to make black people act more white as an act of - albeit unwitting - betrayal. Funny and smart, The Gift is well worth catching.

The Gift by Janice Okoh is booking until the 15th of February at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East; then continuing on tour to Oxford, Bury St Edmunds, Southampton and Scarborough.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz.