FringeReview UK 2026

The Authenticator

National Theatre, London

Genre: Dark Comedy, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: National Theatre, Dorfman

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“I’m afraid the contents are incredibly boring” ventures the ancestral home owner of the six calf-bound ledgers in front of her visitors. Clearly they’re anything but. A quibble too lies in Winsome Pinnock’s title The Authenticator. Single, when there’s two authenticators, though one is a protégé. Who really authenticates whom and what? As the comedy darkens and complicates, all three women discover the cat’s cradle of records cuts two ways, with or without gloves. The Authenticator directed by Miranda Cromwell opens at the National Theatre’s Dorfman till May 9.

Fenella, or Fen (Sylvestre Le Touzel), now curator of her family’s grand home of over 260 years after her twin’s death, welcomes academic Abi (Rakie Ayola) and her sparkling impulsive protégé Marva (Cherelle Skeete), whom she discovered and nurtured as a child. Themes of patronage and condescension criss-cross the comedy and craft pratfalls. Le Touzel’s not the most obvious apologist for her family: intelligent, Oxford-educated and failing to notice Abi was there too.

It’s the first faultline in a series of interrelated complicities. Abi’s from a Nigerian royal family, who owned slaves though, as she points out, treated them better than the British. Marva however is descended from Ghanaian salves brought to Jamaica, where Harford’s plantation was set up. Abi wonders if there might be a conflict of interest, and Marva hasn’t been transparent. Yet the truth is more complex still.

Fen’s vague over the newly-discovered records, but points up her ancestor Henry (all save Fen were “Henry”) was a philanthropist. By now the audience is laughing, even when Fen’s bland assertion of Henry’s later anti-slavery noises didn’t quite make him an anti-abolitionist – “Like John Newton” Abi slips in quickly. Slaver, much later abolitionist, hymn-writer (‘Amazing Grace’) and incidentally three years a slave himself, it’s one of those blink-and-miss moments Pinnock plays with. Marva picks up on a lack of “any Damascene conversion” and it’s clear Henry Harford has a bit more in common with Edward Colston. And there is a statue, but not of any scion. It’s been tactfully banished to the “dungeon”.

John Bausor’s wittily gothic set, lit by Aideen Malone, matches Pinnock; is a character and even enjoys the last word. Open to the audience at both sides, where empty frames drop down, suggesting looming portraits. Though there’s solidity too: a heavy 18^th century Rococo ceiling ascending and descending, and similar set bookends with steps, statues and tables apparating through the cellarage. And a secret passage. The spooky sounds of Tinying Dong, with occasional bursts of music by Benjamin Kwasi Burrell is like a fourth voice; and there’s two voiceovers.

Pinnock’s play is light on its feet, witty, with unpredictable plot-twists. It’s also light in its seriousness, and you wonder where this might settle. For instance whilst Marva’s haunted by discoveries, Abi and Fen enjoy horse-riding and a drunken night recalling punk-green-hair days in Oxford. It’s where Ayola and Le Touzel  can face off. With facets glinting off both this could go in several directions. There are confrontations, Fen does indeed feel insecure over relinquishing her entitlement but it’s more complicated by the three-way dynamics. Le Touzel’s good at masking the point where Fen’s fears might darken counsel (if not character), making Fen more unpredictable, less obviously a white straw woman. Yet Fen’s attempts to accommodate new realities are literally laughable (out loud in fact), full of liberal white privilege.

Nevertheless, in part because of plot-twists, but mostly the way they’re brought out, Pinnock refuses bleak avenues that might swing open like another hidden door. There’s a record of suffering, but this is recessed. Records of erasure and silence  – long before those industrial attempts in Operation Legacy (1950-70) – are highlighted then twisted.

Skeete’s Marva though is both the most sparkling and life-affirming yet most traumatised character: Skeete lights the stage with exuberance and occasional heartbreak. Yet she carries the burden of Marva’s discoveries and actions. Skeete’s performance is serious too, and volatile: though Pinnock won’t let that tone dominate. Ayola’s Abi, the most consistently thoughtful character is subverted by both the constraints of her own privilege and relation to Marva. There’s tensions between patron and the occasionally patronised. Abi too carries class caution as well as professional and Ayola registers all this in silence when alone.

The last third of the 90-minute “gothic psychological thriller” accelerates to half-thriller, half-farce as discoveries and revelations about those discoveries chase each other down through trap-doors to an edgy conclusion. Yet it lands almost softly. Pinnock here seems equivocally benign, as funny as the theme might allow. Though Fen contains stereotypical absurdity she’s more rounded, shrewd and cunning.

It’s a play about settling records, perhaps, not the scores that still need repeating. Few British plays treat of slavery, as Pinnock points out: the British still look with smugness on such American dramas. Yet the most genteelly genocidal nation in history is addressed almost gently. Perhaps that’s the best way to get under the British skin, as it were. You feel Pinnock has something more to say after The Authenticator and the more solemn Rockets and Blue Lights. Absorbing, playfully swerving from where it might travel, it mildly frustrates, mostly digs you in the ribs with questions. And thoroughly entertains. Not a word you’d predict at the start.

Voice of the Ghost Bride (Phoebe Campbell), Voice of the Radio Presenter (Nuala McGovern). Musicians Tom Pigott-Smith (Violin), Tina Jacobs-Lim (Vola), Wayne Urquhart (Cello), Recorded by Niall John Ascott.

Movement Director Shelley Maxwell, Casting Director Alastair Coomer CDG, Voice Coach Hazel Holder, Staff Director Dubheasa Lanipekin.

Producer Tracey Low, Production Manager Ben Arkell, Dramaturg Nina Steiger, CSM Ben Donoghue, DSM Katie Stephen, ASM Callum Wallace, Stage Management Cover Abbie Proctor, Wellbeing Consultant Patricia Ojehonman, Project Draughting Emma Morris, Jef Gage, Nathan James, Digital Art Daniel Radley-Bennett, Costume Supervisor Zoe Thomas-Webb, Running Wardrobe Supervisor Julie Burns McKenzie, Wigs, Hair & Make-Up Supervisor Leanne Lashbrook, Props Supervisor Matilde Marangoni.

Published April 3, 2026April 3, 2026 by Simon Jenner