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“A plantation Airbnb?” says a character in Joy Nesbitt’s tight, challenging, timezone-hopping debut play about the legacy of slavery, neatly summing up the idea at its core. Which is: how, exactly, do we deal with the past? An excellent cast under the direction of Tatenda Shamiso – winner of the Standard’s 2023 Emerging Talent Award – help us over the script’s occasional infelicities.
In South Carolina in 1862, just as the Civil War is about to turn, we see enslaved Ginnie (the always-impressive Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́) happily accepting the attentions of her “massah” Doc Good (an intense Patrick Vaill). If she doesn’t exactly return his “love”, she seems to enjoy their lovemaking and appreciate the favours and the five babies it has brought her. This is bold writing.
