Not only did I see some great shows while across the pond, I met Juliet Wilkes Romero, the very cool playwright of THE WHIP. I read about her play in the Guardian and immediately wanted to take the trip to Stratford-upon-Avon to see it (actually I had no clue how far The Royal Shakespeare Company’s base was from London, but it was more than worth the train ride).
From RSC’s page for the play:
As the 19th Century dawns, politicians of all political persuasions gather in London to abolish the slave trade once and for all.
But will the price of freedom turn out to be a multi-billion pound pay off to the slave owners? Even though such a bailout could drive the country into economic and political ruin?
Spoiler alert: the Brits paid out the equivalent of £20 billion to slave owners. But the question of the play isn’t if they paid it; it’s about how colliding forces allowed the ruling class to win at the expense of black and working-class Brits in the end. Check out the infamous (now deleted) HM Treasury tweet from 2018:
Gotta love the distorted affirmation: “… helped to pay to end the slave trade.” Not: you bailed out/paid off slave owners, you made the rich engaged in a brutal trade richer.
THE WHIP does an incredible job to bring this difficult, infuriating piece of history to life. Politicians love to use the old, tired talking point “how will we pay for it?” when it comes to things like free college, or healthcare for all; THE WHIP reminds us they can find a way to pay for anything — as long as it supports their own selfish interests.