| The Women of Llanrhumney- Acclaim in London |
At the Sherman |
| Reviews compilation of Sherman production , Stratford East Theatre London , April 2, 2025 |
In the darkest days of 2020 Wales Arts Review spoke with Joe Murphy. “Theatres are there to serve”, he said. “Paid for by the taxpayer, our job is to make people feel.” The theatre of Wales has prior experience with Stratford East. Daf James' “On the Other Hand, We're Happy” appeared there in 2019. In a room of tribute to Joan Littlewood the unmistakable figure and face of Victor Spinetti are to be seen. * * * * The Standard headed its review of the London production: “Women of Llanrumney at Stratford East review: this Welsh slave drama is bold, horrific and remarkably assured Azuka Oforka’s debut play marks her as one to watch.” “For a debut play, Azuka Oforka’s story about a Welsh-owned slave plantation in 1765 is remarkably assured. It’s bold in the way it successfully treats horrific subject matter with a mixture of mordant wit, melodrama and deliberately anachronistic absurdism. Patricia Logue’s production, originally staged at Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre, is pacy and gripping. “...As the title suggests, it focuses on a woman plantation owner, Elisabeth (Nia Roberts), her housekeeper Annie (Suzanne Packer) and Cerys (Shvorne Marks), newly promoted to house slave from the punishing cane fields. The three predatory white male characters are subsidiary, and all played for greater or lesser comic effect by Matthew Gravelle. “Llanrumney plantation was founded by the Welsh pirate Captain Morgan in the 1600s, producing sugar to make molasses to make rum. In Oforka’s tale it has passed to the unmarried and childless Elisabeth, who enjoys a license among the tiny white “plantocracy” that she would not have back in the valleys. “Elisabeth spends her days drinking (rum punch immediately after morning coffee), eating (“first breakfast, second breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, supper”) and selectively fornicating. She rules her slaves cruelly but has let the estate go to rack and ruin. "Annie was the issue of a rape by an earlier Morgan “master” and therefore is Elisabeth’s distant relative as well as her chattel. By serving her mistress’s every want and acting as “confidante” she hopes to win her freedom. “Cerys is the daughter Annie turned her back on, so as not to again suffer love and loss, as she did when her own mother was slowly starved, then coated with hot molasses and left for the insects by her rapist. Cerys, herself pregnant with a baby that will be taken from her and sold, burns for the coming rebellion. The choice is stark: war or a possible, provisional liberty. “This makes for potent, compelling drama and most of it is conveyed in terse, tense exchanges of muttered patois between Annie and Cerys each time they set the dining table. Oforka is also an actress, and she absolutely understands the rhythm of dialogue and the pacing of narrative. Packer gives Annie a gnarled and defeated dignity, while Marks’s Cerys is haunted, harsh and resolute. “Each time Roberts enters the action it’s like a drunk has thrown a firecracker into the room. Hers is a barnstorming performance, redolent of Miranda Richardson’s Queenie in Blackadder in its combination of absolute power and bratty self-indulgence, but with more F-bombs and jarringly modern-sounding verbiage. It’s totally out of kilter with the rest of the show - even Gravelle’s trio of cartoon vultures, circling over Elisabeth’s misfortune.” Abridged, with thanks and acknowledgement, from the full review which can be read at: https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/theatre/women-of-llanrumney-theatre-royal-stratford-east-review-b1218903.html * * * * The Telegraph headed its review: “The Women of Llanrumney: A deft exploration of the brutalising impact of slavery Azuka Oforka’s drama is a tremendous and powerful first play, impeccably acted and produced and fully deserving of its London transfer.” “Oforka’s drama, first seen at Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre last year, could have been a worthy historical jeremiad. Instead, it ostensibly presents itself as a pleasingly old-fashioned drawing-room comedy. Inspired by the little-storied history of Welsh slave owners in 18th century Jamaica, it takes place in the plush parlour into which Elisabeth, sole heiress to the real life Llanrumney plantation, staggers into breakfast each morning appallingly hungover, brassy hair akimbo and lipstick too crimson, like a cross between Miss Hannigan and Blackadder’s Elizabeth I. “Elisabeth, played with fabulous gusto by Nia Roberts, likes to regale her loyal and long-serving housemaid Annie in almost sisterly fashion with scurrilous tales of the drunken and debauched night before, before retiring for a quick snooze before “second breakfast” (“food is how these planters flex their wealth”, says Annie to Cerys). Yet, like Ranevsky in The Cherry Orchard, she is blind to her impending doom: the crops are failing, her debts are skyrocketing and, beyond the elegant French veranda, revolution is brewing in the fields. “Oforka cleverly shows the brutalising fault lines of slavery, from Annie’s earlier rejection at birth of her darker-skinned daughter in order to safeguard the undeniably freer life she enjoys as a housekeeper, to the ugly revenge executed against Elisabeth by one of her former slaves. Cerys, newly brought in from the fields to be trained up as a maid, and who looks in vain to her mother for a sign of maternal affection, acts as a sort of chorus, speaking truth to power and able to intuit changes in the air that the much more insulated Annie and Elisabeth cannot. “Both Annie and Cerys are played with impeccable nuance by Suzanne Packer and Shvorne Marks respectively in a play that is consistently alert to the shifting dynamics of power between women and which also boldly maintains a tiny sliver of sympathy for the monstrous and ultimately pitiless Elisabeth – a rare independent-minded woman in colonialism’s cut-throat male playground. "Patricia Logue’s light-footed production rarely missteps either, dancing the tightrope between queasy farce – embodied further by three pompous, perfumed plantation owning grotesques inhabited with fruity relish by Matthew Gravelle – and the still-shocking reality of slavery. This latter is all the more powerful for being mostly described rather than enacted, with a particularly appalling story told by Annie to her daughter that sheds some light on Annie’s determined self preservation.” Abridged, with thanks and acknowledgement, from the full review which can be read at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/the-women-of-llanrumney-theatre-royal-stratford-review/ Picture credit: Chuko Cribb |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
This review has been read 214 times There are 94 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:
|
