Writers: Naomi Wallace and Marcus Reidker
Director: Ron Daniels
The world premiere of The Return of Benjamin Lay at the Finborough Theatre is the co-brainchild of playwright Naomi Wallace and playwright / historian Marcus Reidker It’s a story about religion and human responsibility for the slave trade based on Lay’s own eighteenth-century treatise which got him expelled from the Quaker community. With cameos from George II and Benjamin Franklin, this one-man show performed by Mark Povinelli is filled with the incident of an adventurous life but feels dramatically unstructured.
Returning to his Quaker community to beg for readmission and speaking to the present-day audience about the consequences of the last 300 years, Benjamin Lay explains his life story. From a beloved life on the open waves to finding the woman of his dreams and campaigning for the abolition of slavery, Lay is desperate to be part of the community once more, but can he truly accept them?
Wallace and Reidker’s 70-minute drama is staged as Lay’s appeal to his Quaker brother, represented by the theatre audience. Accused of various crimes and practices for which he was exiled and vilified, his life story expands in rather muddled form from there. While the character comes back to the Quaker meeting house frequently in his expansive narrative, it is never clear enough what he did and the process that led to his expulsion, nor quite what ‘Your persecution and ridicule’ amounted to in practice. Instead, the writers focus on Lay’s philosophical and activist development, rather than specifying why he is in this place at this moment and the play lacks jeopardy as a result. And although it is implied this is one of many communities he has been expelled from over the years, there is little clarity about why this one matters so much.
Instead, the play is overstuffed with activities, an adventure story like The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling filled with places, people and experiences. Wallace and Reidker cut back and forth in time, one moment at the court of George II, the next on a ship with little sense of how he got there; now killing a warthog in spite of his progressive views and determination to grow his own food, and in the next sentence playing Richard III and speculating what the character of Queen Margaret may have said had Shakespeare completed her speech. It is messy and exhausting, but also unclear what the ultimate message is supposed to be.
Povinelli performs it all with considerable gusto, the energy levels never dipping as he enthusiastically takes the audience through Lay’s life story, demonstrating an impassioned defence of the character’s actions as he becomes more fired up by the inhumanity of the slave trade. Povinelli finds nuance: the shock of seeing a friend pilloried, the softer love he discovers with his wife and the commitment to his cause while still striving to return to the community he misses.
But the play’s modern sensibilities mean it looks in the wrong direction for contemporary relevance and fails to grasp the dramatic possibilities that the Quaker community itself represents. Lay aside, none of the other characters have any flesh to them, just caricatures and conveniences that don’t ground Lay sufficiently in his world or foreground the experience of slavery from those who suffered by it. A rollicking adventure anchored by a great performance, but The Return of Benjamin Lay is too scattered to secure its message.
Runs until 8 July 2023
