Belgrade theatre, CoventryThe story of Sarah Bonetta Davies, given to Queen Victoria, is contrasted with a modern black British woman in Janice Okoh’s playThe historian David Olusoga has spoken of black Britons across the centuries whose stories have been forgotten, untold or “hidden in plain view”. Sarah Bonetta Davies is one of them. A 19th-century Yoruba princess, she was orphaned and enslaved before becoming the goddaughter of Queen Victoria and living in Brighton.This co-production by Eclipse Theatre and the Belgrade is part of an initiative to deliver new black British stories. One of the achievements of Janice Okoh’s clever and complex script is that it is not a straightforward retelling of Davies’s life. The Gift offers a formally original and intellectual engagement with forgotten history, cross-racial adoption and the impact of imperialism on black British lives today. Continue reading…
Via: The Gift review – clever and complex vision of black Britons, then and now
Categories: English News