| African Snow | Venue: York Theatre Royal Dates: 30th March to 21st April 2007 Tickets: £9 - £18 Box office - 01904 623568 |
For a play that is such a joy to watch, ‘African Snow’ has a painfully sore point to make: namely that, while Murray Watts’ script is supposed to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Britain, the trade may not just have left a permanent scar on British history but an unhealed, open wound.  | | Israel Oyemulade as Olaudah Equiano |
This intense and powerfully moving new drama from the Riding Lights Theatre Company examines the very human impact of the slave trade from both sides of the Atlantic. Curiously set inside the mind of the famous clergyman and former slave ship master, John Newton (Roger Alborough), it moves between islands and continents as he remembers his time at sea – and dips in and out of the biography of slave-turned-freeman Olaudah Equiano (Israel Oyemulade). Equiano’s narrative haunts Newton, as he awaits their impending meeting, and allows the play to look through the lens of both African oppressed and British oppressor. | "the trade may not just have left a permanent scar on British history but an unhealed, open wound." | |
The African’s story is clearly privileged here: Equiano’s kidnapping (aged eleven), the humiliation he suffers at the hands of a succession of ship captains and his almost comical baptism seem to have far more theatrical appeal than Newton’s weak spiritual struggle – and particularly when these events are echoed by ominous sounding drumbeats or the cries of his long lost sister, which are carried onstage. One might even go so far to say that Ben Okafor’s gospel-style reworking of Amazing Grace is sweeter than Newton’s original. The talk throughout the play is of 'freedom', 'faith', 'justice' and 'forgiveness'. These are big words being thrown about the stage, and they require a high calibre of actor to give the ideas behind them a deservedly big impact. Luckily, the entire cast – most of whom took on multiple parts as sailors and family members – delivered frighteningly good performances.  | | Roger Alborough as John Newton |
There is something of the documentary-esque about the show, which quickly fast-forwards through the lives of two historical figures and adapts their stories to instruct and educate. However, I found the way that Newton’s and Equiano’s lives were contrasted very moving. The fact of slavery is known to all of us, but when the desperately humble and eloquent Equiano was tied up by his ankles, or wept over his family, it did feel as though my idea of the human cost of the slave trade edged that little bit closer to reality. Jo Shelley | 
