Blood of My Blood: Challenging debut play about the legacy of slavery

“A plantation Airbnb?” says a character in Joy Nesbitt’s tight, challenging, timezone-hopping debut play about the legacy of slavery, neatly summing up the idea at its core. Which is: how, exactly, do we deal with the past? An excellent cast under the direction of Tatenda Shamiso – winner of the Standard’s 2023 Emerging Talent Award – help us over the script’s occasional infelicities.

In South Carolina in 1862, just as the Civil War is about to turn, we see enslaved Ginnie (the always-impressive Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́) happily accepting the attentions of her “massah” Doc Good (an intense Patrick Vaill). If she doesn’t exactly return his “love”, she seems to enjoy their lovemaking and appreciate the favours and the five babies it has brought her. This is bold writing.

Meanwhile in the present day Ginnie’s descendant Talulah has rented her cabin from Good’s heirs, a history lecturer and his pregnant wife uneasily monetising the tainted inheritance of the plantation. Herself a philosophy graduate and part-time astrologer, Talulah hopes to summon her ancestor and ask her advice on bringing her own unplanned child into the world.

This premise, and this collection of traits in one character, are somewhat hard to swallow but Jodie Campbell brings wry conviction to Talulah’s contradictions. And besides, don’t we all know someone who’s apparently entirely rational but who also believes in tarot or fairies?

The twist comes when the Goods realise Talulah shares their surname. Indeed, through Doc imposing himself on Ginnie – even if she apparently welcomes his attentions, he holds her life in his hands - they are fifth cousins.

At this point I should say that this play dealing with the endless ramifications of hideous historic wrongs is also very funny. In the present day scenes Vaill plays Doc’s five-times great grandson, James, and this jittery academic’s reaction to his consanguinity with Talulah is a treat to watch. Insisting he’s “not MAGA” he ties himself up in forehead-thumping knots over the idea that she’s secretly seeking reparations.

Earlier, James has given a slick justification of how his persecuted Irish forebears came to be “landowners… and by proxy slaveowners”. Basically, he suggests it would have been rude of them not to partake in the socio-economic norms of the time. There’s a hint that mental illness got passed down the Good bloodline, along with everything else.

James’s wife Amanda (Hannah Morrish) meanwhile is a collage of liberal white anxieties. One of her earliest guests in the slave hut immediately threw up, and Amanda joined in as she is a “sympathetic vomiter – also an over-sharer!” She describes the antebellum era as “complicated” and professes that she was troubled when a “mixed” couple had a Gone With the Wind themed wedding at the plantation.

Later, in a chilling scene, Morrish plays Doc’s wife Nora, also pregnant, visiting Ginnie and giving vent to the hatred she feels to Ginnie’s children who work in her house. Karene Peter continues Nesbitt’s neat juxtapositions. In the past scenes she’s the enslaved Bertha, exhorting Ginnie to prepare for emancipation.

In the present she’s Niecey, studying “culinary anthropology” under James and working on events at the plantation. Among Niecey’s many witty lines is a solemn one: “This place is an open wound. We need it.”

After the strained weakness of the setup, the mid-section of this play bristles with ideas and hard questions. Nesbitt’s writing falters again towards the end before finding a solid resolution. Shamiso’s production is energetic and vivid – there’s a lovely moment where Ginnie and Talulah connect and then lose each other – although slightly marred by the sightlines of designer Natalie Pryce’s skeletal hut.

It’s the actors who really make it work. The chameleonic Adékọluẹ́jọ́ is as convincing and present as ever. Vaill, himself a winner of a 2022 Standard award for his performance in Oklahoma!, exudes barely-contained volatility. Campbell, Peter and Morrish give fine, succinct characterisations. As culinary anthropologist Niecey might say, there’s plenty of food for thought here, and lots to get your teeth into.