The White Card – Leeds Playhouse

Writer: Claudia Rankine

Director: Natalie Ibu

The audience is welcomed into an easy room, classy all-white décor and the familiar sounds of a tennis match playing on an unseen TV, positioned on the fourth wall. As we take our seats, the cast members already on stage stare out at us in a way that is both unnerving and which serves as recurring implication that we too are complicit in what is going to play out.

As the action starts, it is immediately apparent that our setting is one of affluence and pomposity; framed descriptions of art adorn the walls, drinks are poured, and the family’s ‘help’ is given the night off for the sake of appearances. As the dialogue begins, a Black BSL translator stands backstage centre translating the goings on and continues to do so for the duration of the performance – a conscious and suggestive choice.

The family has invited upcoming artist Charlotte, masterfully played by Estella Daniels, to their house in the hope of acquiring her next piece. Charlotte is a black artist whose work the family feels would make an excellent addition to their collection which centres broadly on themes of racial violence and the plight of black people.

As the night progresses, we encounter a range of familiar personalities, and the concepts of white fragility and virtue signalling are only too apparent in the various exchanges. Tensions simmer as Virginia, the matriarch of the family, played by Kate Copeland, falters from slight racial slur (if such a thing exists) to an outburst of outright prejudice. The remainder of the overwhelmingly white cast engage Charlotte in conversations about race as though she is only there to serve that purpose.

The piece reaches a crescendo with Virginia’s racism, but the precise, focused direction of Natalie Ibu does not let up. In what an audience may expect to the beat change of the play, we encounter the same behaviour, a white supremacy over the conversation, the discussion of black people as commodities and the revelation of autopsy as art – a photographic image of Michael Brown fatally shot by a white police officer – hanging on the wall of art buyers.

Stagehands, three black women who become a supportive chorus for Charlotte, help transform the stage into Charlotte’s studio. As Charlotte works on developing her ideas, Charles, the father, played by Matthew Pidgeon, intrudes on her process, once again race dominates the conversation. With a focus on art and how the black body is portrayed, we see a beautiful and very well-written reversal of roles. The art buyer becomes the subject, he who represents both oppressor and voyeur becomes the one who is viewed and judged by his own skin.

The White Card offers the chance to think, talk, reflect on who we all are, and what role we play in society. The play highlights the power of white privilege in America, but as the director asks, “If we are a country where a young Black girl is strip-searched at school […] Or a Black man can be stopped and searched simply for wearing a coat on a sunny day, […] Then we are a country that needs to talk about the privilege of whiteness.”

I could talk a lot more about the themes and tropes in this play, but the cast and creative team do a much better job than I ever could. See this play.

Runs until 4th June 2022.