FringeReview UK 2023
The Return of Benjamin Lay
Arsalan Sattari Productions in Association with Neil McPherson of Finborough Theatre
Genre: American Theater, Biographical Drama, Drama, Historical, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre
Venue: Finborough Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Naomi Wallace and actor Mark Provinelli inhabit this gestural giant with wit, sympathy, rage and an agency burning up centuries between. It’s profoundly moving too, speaks to our condition of techno-serfdom, new slavery, discrimination everywhere. The packed audience are never sure who might be picked on next, but delight in the calling-out. Superb.
Arsalan Sattari Productions in Association with Neil McPherson of Finborough Theatre
Written by Naomi Wallace and Marcus Rediker. Directed by Ron Daniels, Set Riccardo Hernandez and Isobel Nicolson and Costume Designer Isobel Nicolson, Lighting Designer Anthony Doran. Sound Designer John Leonard. Movement Consultant Bill Irwin.
Stage Manager Martha J Baldwin, Producer Arsalan Sattari
Till July 8th
Review
How often are this theatre’s windows exposed and open to traffic beyond? Well it’s hot, but not just that, as midsummer blazes, almost blinds the simple set of wooden chairs, table and travelling bag. In The Return of Benjamin Lay written by Naomi Wallace and Marcus Rediker – and directed by Ron Daniels – stripping back illusion in Quaker fashion breeds visions.
We’ll agree it’s 2023. And this theatre just now, courtesy of set designers Riccardo Hernandez and Isobel Nicolson, resembles a Quaker meeting house on the Finborough Road. Should we hiss at a ghost almost 300 years after his death? Officially yes: “You have kidnapped our children. We cast you out like a leper and nevermore… participate in the … the Society of Friends.” Benjamin Lay (1682-1759) indulges a bit of unpacking then.
Lay – “shepherd, sailor, prophet, and the British Empire’s first revolutionary abolitionist” – erupts from the grave. He’s back, but is he just angry? Apostrophised as the ”little David” at four feet high, Lay confronts petty Goliath George II (thrust in prison for refusing the role of jester) and that other Benjamin, Franklin, about his slaves. Franklin’s all kites and electricity; his urbanity crackles. Lay has a kite of his own, and it blazes. Lay might be uncompromising, “impossible” but he can’t be imagined away. Thomas Paine for one owes much to him.
Quite often Lay’s equally short avatar Mark Provinelli asks an audience member to imitate a lamb, tie the back of his armour plating, or might move among us – this is a Quaker meeting and he seems inspired to speak; though at 66 minutes a tad longer than any Meeting I’ve known might countenance.
But then Provinelli – and Lay – have learnt a thing or three from Coleridge; and Provinelli can hold you with Lay’s former mariner’s eye like few others.
Lay’s story is told chronologically. Relating his years as sailor (1703-18) Provinelli enacts Lay’s foretop days ascending a ladder; Wallace’s prose is laced with visceral activity. He also acts Queen Margaret from Richard III but refuses the title part. After meeting Susan, he marries, emigrates to Barbados, sees a slave commit suicide rather than submit, and for 13 years infuriates everyone.
Moving to Quaker’s colony Pennsylvania in 1731, Lay’s appalled at how Quakers justify slavery. His final stop Abingdon, sees him retreat to a cave after his beloved wife’s death, with 200 plus books to live on vegetables. Refusing all animal and slave products, he spins new clothes from flax. Author of over 200 pamphlets, Franklin publishes one for him, but leaves off the printer’s name. History relates how Franklin was changed by Lay (and kept visiting him), but Wallace sticks to Lay’s outrage; his invective here is splendid.
Isobel Nicolson is costume designer too, deploying panoplies of trad Quaker attire, with flourishes. Anthony Doran’s lighting surprises: we’re mostly dazzled by natural light. Doran’s creeps in just as dusk touches, strip-lighting in different hues, pin-pointing purpose. John Leonard’s sound starts earlier, billowing, crashing, landing. Bill Irwin’s movement too has Proinvelli utilise every bit of space, almost alarmingly.
Wallace, two times winner (back-to-back) of the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn prize, amongst many others, is both political and often lyrical in her history plays. In perhaps her most famous drama, premiered in 1996 at the Bush, One Flea Spare, she absorbs the 17th century and Donne as much as here she espouses 18th century speech – and a facsimile of Lay’s own pamphlet title-page is handed round too.
Absorbing such phrases as “the common treasury of earth” from Gerrard Winstanley (also adopted by others) Wallace’s prose inflects but doesn’t imitate the period. It’s engaging, florid, but above all limber and brightly-deliverable. Wallace’s decade-long collaboration with historian Rediker takes her ever further in exploring the antebellum US and retrofits the UK as seat of its many dark inheritances, as here.
Provinelli speaks mostly as Lay, though he also deftly inhabits George II, towering over and patronising Lay in a Swiftian trope; Franklin, and his great friend the slave Bussa, as well as wife Sarah and sundry sailors and officials. There’s surprises to be sprung from that bag, not just armour, kite, sword and bible, but what happens to the last when he plunges his sword into it.
If Lay “trembling at the edge of playing God himself” hits at overreach, he’s in fact invoking profound democracy. Wallace and Provinelli inhabit this gestural giant with wit, sympathy, rage and an agency burning up centuries between. Pleading for readmission, he asks for help: “I’m no good alone, and neither are you…. It is not too late to purge these poisons.”
It’s profoundly moving too, speaks to our condition of techno-serfdom, new slavery, discrimination everywhere. The packed audience are never sure who might be picked on next, but delight in the calling-out. Superb.
