Janice Okoh’s new Black history play The Gift juxtaposes a story from Queen Victoria’s 19th-century royal circle with the present day. Just opened at Belgrade Theatre, it now transfers to London’s Theatre Royal Stratford East as part of a UK-wide tour. Take a look at our production shots gallery – and then get booking!
Janice Okoh‘s new play The Gift is the third show to emerge from Eclipse Theatre’s groundbreaking Revolution Mix movement, which is spearheading the largest-ever delivery of new Black British stories in theatre, film and radio. It continues at Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre until this Saturday 25 January 2020 and then visits London’s Theatre Royal Stratford East (29 January-15 February), Oxford, Bury St Edmunds, Southampton and Scarborough.
Set in both 1852 and the present day, the outrageously funny play explores themes of cross-racial adoption and cultural appropriation, partly inspired by the remarkable true story of Sarah Bonetta Davies, a young African girl who was adopted by Queen Victoria and raised in the Queen’s circles.
Her story is juxtaposed against that of a second Sarah – a middle-class black woman staying in a modern-day Cheshire village with her husband and small child. The two Sarahs’ timelines are brought together when they meet Queen Victoria for tea, in a gathering which promises to be anything but a regular tea party.
The Gift is and directed by Eclipse founder and former artistic director Dawn Walton, who also directed the acclaimed tour of Black Men Walking, based on a real-life Black men’s walking group in Sheffield, as part of Revolution Mix.
Production photos
In the six-strong cast of The Gift, Shannon Hayes plays Sarah Bonetta Davies. She’s joined by Dave Fishley (as James Davies), Rebecca Charles (Mrs Schoen / Harriet), Donna Berlin (Aggie / Sarah), Joanna Brookes (Harriet Waller / Queen Victoria) and Richard Teverson (Reverend Venn). Photography by Ellie Kurtz.
