'Driftwood' review — the personal and political collide in this intriguing snapshot of Caribbean history

Read our review of Martina Laird's play Driftwood, now in performances at the Kiln Theatre to 4 July.

Summary

• Martina Laird's play Driftwood comes to the Kiln Theatre
• The story is set in Trinidad's Port of Spain in 1956
• Ellen Thomas gives a strong performance as savvy Pearl
• Bridgerton’s Martins Imhangbe plays her long-lost son Diamond

Driftwood is the first play by Trinidadian-British actor Martina Laird, which recently premiered at the RSC's The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. Set in Trinidad's Port of Spain in 1956 shortly before the country gained its independence, the action is confined to the Alma, a private members’ club run by Miss Pearl (Ellen Thomas) and her daughter Ruby (Cat White) and has something of the febrile atmosphere of a Tennessee Williams play with colonial tensions, plus incest.

Laird packs a lot into this play but, like Alma’s unsound wiring that needs the attention of an electrician, it’s structurally shaky and in need of a couple more redrafts. The play’s powder keg is Diamond (Bridgerton’s Martins Imhangbe), the son that Pearl gave up decades earlier, and who is seeking his mother and any opportunities that can be wrung out of her current set-up – including his attraction to his half-sister (incredibly, neither has any real hesitation in acting on it).

The first half moves at a sluggish pace and the heavy use of patois renders the plot intricacies difficult to follow. Pearl and Ruby, who are in the expat service industry, likely would have modified their accents in company, if not when alone. Justin Audibert’s direction is both overloaded and filled with empty space in which the delirious emotions and the tableaus don’t have the impact that they should. Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey's set design features colonial and African influences, but the claustrophobia gives way to immobility.

As the mixed-race Ruby, White rather resembles Carmen Jones star Dorothy Dandridge and Anita in West Side Story (Mansion tells her that she’s made for music and dancing, not hard work), but she only hints at the full extent of the character’s opportunism and “nastiness”.

Thomas is stronger as her workhorse mother, who is decidedly not the maternal type, and who traipses around town collecting rent in her uncomfortable footwear. A supporter of Trinidadian independence, while her daughter is happy to align herself with their British and American colonisers, she is clear-eyed about Mansion (Roger Ringrose), the jovially racist Englishman who owns the Alma and has vague plans to return to England. He expects Pearl to wait on him hand and foot, yet doesn’t have any intention of making official provisions for her.

Pearl temporarily disappears from the action, and Diamond contrives a racket with American sailor Tom (Ziggy Heath), whose “Hey, buddy” folksiness quickly gives way to something much malignant. The final scene is full-on Caribbean gothic, which is played out in a sequence of stylised movement that doesn’t allow the characters’ muddled motivations to feel real.

Laird is an excellent actor, but this piece needs a considerable amount of polishing before it can shine like its protagonists’ gemstone names. Nevertheless, the way in which the personal and political come together in the depiction of this particular moment in Caribbean history is intriguing, and further efforts could well reap greater rewards.

Driftwood is at the Kiln Theatre to 4 July. Book Driftwood tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Driftwood (Photos by Marc Brenner)