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Emperor Jones: review

The production is brilliant. However, I am not as enamoured of the play as Michael Billington is, who gives it a rare 5 stars.

Billington argues

…in this 1920 expressionist piece, the first serious American play about black experience.… in little more than an hour, O’Neill offers us a kaleidoscopic vision of black American history…

And he sums up well

…His titular hero is an ex-Pullman car porter who has become demagogic overlord of a small Caribbean island. Warned of an impending coup, he goes on the run through a dark forest in which he experiences nightmarish visions of shackled chain-gang prisoners, black slaves inspected like cattle by white planters and a bone-rattling witch doctor who seems to embody his own enslavement to superstition….

As background, Clapp says

“It’s been considered a barely disguised satire on the tyrannical President Sam of Haiti, but Eugene O’Neill said he got the story from a travelling circus performer, who’d heard a yarn about a guy who could be killed only with a silver bullet. He also said he based the main character on a barman….”

Let’s start with the positives. Thea Sharrock directs brilliantly, with a great design (Richard Hudson), and good use of lighting (Adam Silverman) and sound (Gregory Clarke). Sharrock has had a fast rise since her re-staging of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls about 5 years ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did land the job as AD of the Royal Court as Susannah Clapp argues.

The set is a long sand/mud box pit, which the audience peers into. Actors appear and disappear from hatches. “The roof” of the pit is made up by metal fans (which remind you of the tropical heat) which are raised and lowered echoing the claustrophobia that Jones feels. The theatrical whole (the change of lights and the haunting sounds) is a superb realisation of the play and Jones’ state of mind.

My only slight niggle is that the audience at the narrow end of the pit (and I was at one of these ends) couldn’t often see Paterson Joseph’s eyes or features, which meant we missed out on some of his amazing performance.

Joseph was great. Arrogant, charming, violent to haunted, wild, desolate and the whole range between. He was supported well but his performance drowns out most of the rest of the cast apart from perhaps the witch doctor.

So, what’s my problem?

First, it’s a white man’s vision. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this per se, at all. But, in my mind, O’Neill loses some thing in his crystallised view of “black history”. I found his use of the “savage black” and witch doctor slightly uncomfortable. But maybe this was my problem.

Secondly, I think the vision is crude. Billington would argue “he never lets us forget that Brutus Jones’s brief tyranny is both the product of historic oppression of his people and potent white example.” But visions of a slave galley and auctions by white people, to me aren’t enough. Particularly as these images are all told as flash back and to me don’t organically spring from the story. They are Jones’ nightmares come to haunt him and us, but in being flash backs I think O’Neill’s story is not as strong as it could be.

Still, the play is not bad and it does make valid points (and I don’t have a reputation like O’Neill or Billington). It is definitely worth seeing for the brilliant staging even if it is not, in my opinion, a brilliant vision of Black American history.

Gate Theatre. Until December 17. Box office: 020 7229 0706 (although I believe it is returns only at the moment.)

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  • About me

    I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.

  • Recent Work

    Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).

  • Nakamitsu

  • Yellow Gentlemen