Red Velvet: the futility of theatre as an instrument of social change
05 Dec 2022

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by John Lauener

The thing about the English is that we're open. To a point. We like the new but based on the old.

In 1833, Ira Aldridge was the first black man to play Othello on a British stage. His booked run lasted two performances. 1833 was also the year that England took tentative steps towards fully abolishing slavery, resulting in protests and riots both for and against. Playwright Lolita Chakrabarti takes the former event as the basis for Red Velvet, setting it in context of the latter. However Red Velvet is not just an accounting of a shameful moment in history, or just the story of an injustice visited upon one man. Chakrabarti also weaves in the concept of change, justice, and how we are resistant to it. She manages to include women's rights, gay rights, and the codification of styles of acting. Nowhere are the events of the play linked explicitly to the present—where all those debates are still raging—but the question of who has the right to take the stage, to exist as accepted full members of society, couldn't be more implicit.
 
It would be disheartening and bleak if Chakrabarti hadn't written such a barn burner of a play, simmering and building to a shattering climax. And this production, directed by Cherissa Richards, is electrifying, with the themes rising organically from the finely drawn and acted characters. There is also ample comedy to leaven the tension. One-liners abound, usually spoken in blissful ignorance, and the physical comedy of Jeff Lillico (Copy That, Unravelled, Bang Bang, Tom at the Farm, Cinderella) applying his '60s teen pop star hair to a very physical 1883 high camp Shakespearean overemoting Iago, is hysterical. But often the events are uncomfortably amusing. While it is comedic to watch people talk around their prejudices and attempting to not be offensive, it is also a sharp jab in the ribs about all the times we have experienced or perpetrated micro-aggressions ourselves. The newspaper reviews that doomed Aldridge's run as Othello are classic examples, as are the emotions that traverse the face of Starr Domingue (Dixon Road, Mary Poppins) as the backstage maid who sees and hears all, but is allowed to express little.

Allan Louis (Julius Caesar) does very subtle work as Aldridge. Letting us see just how much effort it takes to be stoic and calm while enduring overt and covert racism. It plays beautifully against his character's efforts to achieve naturalistic and passionate performances from himself and the cast. Something he is forced to do constantly in life. He is also struggling to contain a natural sensuality, being criticized for both his supposed unchecked sexuality and propensity for violence. His Desdemona (Ellen Denny) is eager to expand her thespian skills, but she also has a more than passing interest in Aldridge himself. And Aldridge and stage manager Pierre Laporte, who daringly cast Aldridge in the role, have a history of friendship that Laporte would obviously like to be more. Kyle Blair (Mary Poppins) as Laporte presents a businesslike facade that seethes with repressed passion that cannot be revealed. Until all is revealed in an epic confrontation between Louis and Blair. It is all the more lacerating because there is still so much that must remain unspoken.

Chakrabarti's use of Shakespearean touchstones as metaphors is a touch didactic but brutally effective. As Aldridge states, "That's the thing about Shakespeare, he unnerves you." Shakespeare has survived through all the changes that theatre and culture have wrestled with. And all the ones that linger unpleasantly. The rest of the troupe—Nathan Howe, Patrick McManus (Orphans for the Czar) and Amelia Sargisson (King Lear)—try on the new style of acting and it is exhilarating for them, but they, like the society they entertain, are unable to make the leap to defend, or in some cases even befriend, Aldridge. Red Velvet speeds along, fuelled by repressed energy and precision performances, and one would like to believe that in a time of colour-blind casting, gay for pay, feminism, method acting ridicule, etc, much of what we are witnessing is in the past. Surely we are far beyond 1833. Except we're not. Eavesdropping on the elderly het couple behind me as intermission ended, the male half launched into a defense of how times had changed. He explained (mansplained?) that he had seen an opera with a black soprano in the lead so, equality and representation has been achieved. Liking the new as long as it is based on the old. I have no doubts that the incendiary second act changed his mind.