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Extended Review - Spoiler Warning!
Rockets and Blue Lights is a sensational new play by Winsome Pinnock, winner of the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award, which tells the story of 21st century black actress, Lou (Kiza Deen), in parallel with Thomas (Karl Collins), a black sailor in Victorian London. The title references J. M. W. Turner’s famous painting, and his equally popular work, The Slave Ship, was used as a jumping off point for the play’s theme. Turner (Paul Bradley) features in both stories, as himself proper, and as a character in the film Lou stars in, allowing the stories to interweave and increasingly blur into one another as Lou becomes more haunted by history.
Premiering globally at The Royal Exchange, once one of the world’s largest cotton exchanges and a den of wealth built from the blood and sweat of the Atlantic Slave Trade, it’s a poignant link between place and story. The Exchange is also a theatre in the round, and director Miranda Cromwell uses the space so effectively that it’s hard to imagine it performed in any other configuration. At the opening, the stage is completely empty, laid with a white flooring; only when Billie the Cabin Boy (Anthony Aje) splashes in from the side do I realise that water has been lapping in slowly, and the white floor, like paper, is blotted with his footprints, writing the story of the past.
The play explores the personal journey of Lou, cast as a captured African woman, Olu, in a new film called The Ghost Ship about Turner’s painting of the slave ship massacre; even the film's first read-through is uncomfortable as the stage directions in the script detail the horror to be captured on camera. Slowly Lou’s starring role is diminished to make room for Turner’s story, and Olu is left a ghost of a character with no agency: just a tragic victim to be beaten into submission.
The movement is one of the play’s many highlights – Cromwell creates a language of just three slow steps forward and one back: a rhythm that captures the seamless step forward and backwards in time. We see this sequence repeated as characters circle the stage and we spiral through history: we see Lou develop a romance with the film’s researcher, Reuben (Natey Jones), and the love between Thomas and his wife Lucy (Rochelle Jones) in the 19th century; infamous Turner boarding the merchant ship in a plea for one last adventure, and the leading actor playing him achieving fame in the 21st century; we watch Thomas’s daughter, Jess (Kudzai Sitima), dance at a ball with her sweetheart, while Lou and Reuben do the same at the film’s after party, which merges and explodes into united and unbridled traditional African dancing which is joyful to watch.
Another movement device I’ve never seen before is to have all violent and sexual contact enacted metres apart between perpetrator and victim or action and reaction. Not actually touching is powerful because it separates the affect and the effect. In the 19th century, Billie is initiated into the ship’s crew through almost drowning him in a bucket of water (Aje forces his own head down while Natey Jones as Caesar mimes the push behind him); in the present day, during the film’s shooting, Lou’s slave character Olu is whipped by a deckhand (Matthew Seadon-Young strikes the ground while Deen writhes on the other side of the stage). As almost all of the violence is directed towards black characters, by having no physical contact, the play does not propagate the same issue which overwhelms Lou during the film’s intense scene and she rails against to Reuben: that of the film‘s depiction of ‘torture porn’, the degradation of black bodies and the over-sentimentality used as catharsis for white guilt. As a predominately white audience, the idea is keenly felt in the room too, but by juxtaposing the horror with a sudden switch to pointing out the ploy, the play cleverly turns the sentimentality back at us and dreads the line of emotion carefully.
Pinnock’s script is both poetic and political and embedded with monologue, song and dance. Live musician and musical director Femi Temowo reflects both the sombre and soulful atmospheres while Cromwell’s direction works cohesively to let speech and movement take centre stage, aided by Laura Hopkins’s minimal set which does not distract and allows a blank canvas for the changing and merging of time and place. The design includes a rain effect and The Exchange seem to be getting some mileage out of it, having previously used it in Wuthering Heights but it’s certainly cool and the pressure creates a cold breeze, which, whether incidental or not, physically reflects the viscerality of the play. The performances are all strong: Paul Bradley and Karl Collins stand out with commanding stage presences, but it’s a collaborative ensemble effort, with each actor playing at least two roles. There are a few stutters here and there but it’s perhaps just Pinnock’s wordy script coupled with a few preview jitters.
The costume design is equally measured and versatile, allowing characters to switch roles with the smallest garment addition or removal. In the final act, simply by white actor Seadon-Young donning a straw hat, and Jones removing his shoes, aided by a respective shotgun and a machete in each of their hands, we’re suddenly on a plantation, and we're hit by the heartbreaking realisation that Thomas has been tricked back into slavery. As Seadon-Young patrols the perimeter of the stage menacingly, Jones as Thomas swings the machete and delivers a powerful monologue which links the trauma of the past with the present with lines such as ‘I am Grenfell. I am those who die in custody’. The speech, echoed in part by the ensemble standing amongst the audience, and combined with Jessica Hung Han Yun‘s moody lighting and Elena Peña’s threatening soundscape, as well as the gradual flooding of the entire stage, creates a powerful closing sequence that is incredibly aurally and visually arresting. After the curtain call, we‘re left with the empty stage as a mirror of water and the house lights reflected in it like stars. No longer rockets and blue lights, but the quiet after the raging storm.
Rockets and Blue Lights is a sensational, innovative and provocative play which discusses the past and present issues surrounding black history and identity through the prism of slavery. Written with intelligence and a lyrical nature, and performed with heart and passion, it’s a versatile piece that uses The Exchange’s unique environment to achieve staggering results.
Rockets and Blue Lights’ run was unfortunately cut short due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but its power and brilliance mean it will surely be staged and performed again in the near future. You can watch the cast's farewell song here:
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