Ryan Calais Cameron’s ‘electrifying drama’ dramatises a pivotal moment in Sidney Poitier’s career
Ryan Calais Cameron is having quite a year, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. This spring, his breakout play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy completed its journey from fringe to West End. Now he has given us something utterly different, and even more brilliant. Retrograde is a crisp three-hander that propels him “to the front rank” of British playwrights. “Even-handed and light of touch”, the drama – about an incident in the early career of the actor Sidney Poitier – has echoes of today’s “cancel culture” debates. Yet it “rigorously honours its 1950s setting, attaining a peak of articulate defiance that recalls Arthur Miller’s The Crucible”. Yes, it’s “that good”.
