Driftwood
The Other Place
Stratford-upon-Avon
★★☆☆☆

SET in 1956 Port of Spain, Trinidad, one more of Britain’s freedom-seeking colonies edging towards independence, Martina Laird’s new play explores the tensions between expectations and reality.

Late middle-aged Pearl has spent most of her life managing a now shabby colonial club house owned by Mansion, a whisky-swilling ex-pat, planning to leave his privileged life when threatened by “politics for the plebs” to return to England and live off the West Indian wealth Pearl has worked so hard to provide.

Apart from her doubts over future uncertainties, she has to cope with the waywardness of her good-time-seeking daughter, Ruby. Life becomes more problematic when Diamond, a drifter, turns up revealing he is the son she gave up as a child.

The catalyst for the action occurs when Tom, a wheeling and dealing US marine, enters with tempting offers for both Diamond and Ruby. Just as Mansion represents the passing Imperial control, the corrupt American signals the new oppressive power over Trinidadian lives.

Director Justin Audibert’s West-Indian heritage is clearly a strength in working with a cast with most of the dialogue being in the Jamaican Picong English. However, this first play from Martina Laird, a well-known Jamaican actor, while providing meaty parts for the cast, creaks in its structure.

The first half, dealing with the family dynamics, has the feeling of a soap opera, with hints of incest added for interest, while after the interval there is a sense of the need to enliven proceedings with action, including a dramatic death scene to bring the chaos to  a speedy resolution.

The play’s title, Driftwood is signalled, not only by Pearl’s prized possession of a focal African statuette carved from flotsam brought from her homeland, but by the nature of these Trinidadians emerging from a slave culture, reflected in Martins Imhangbe’s tribal dance of anguished impotence.

The cast, particularly Ellen Thomas’s world-weary Pearl and Cat White’s Rita Hayworth obsessed Ruby carry a wooden script enlivened with oddly awkward lyrical set speeches.

Driftwood is a play with worthy intentions, dressed in a very outdated form.

Runs until May 30. Box office: 01789 331 111, rsc.org.uk