The Windrush Secret
The authenticity with which Rodreguez King-Dorset portrayed the three characters involved was so precise that I had to keep reminding myself they were being played by the same man - the only man on stage.
Playhouse
In these straightened times, one person shows have become the default setting for touring theatre productiosn. Too often, these are wikiplays, a run through of a random celebs life presented as a soliloquy. Or perhaps an introspective examination of the performer's inner soul. Or thinly disguised stand up. Each have their place, but it's easy to weary of the lack of ambition. Fortunately, Rodreguez King-Dorset's Windrush Secret, which he both wrote and performed at the Playhouse, is only technically a one man show. The authenticity with which he portrayed the three characters involved was so precise that I had to keep reminding myself they were being played by the same man - the only man on stage.
Those three characters were Marcus Ramsey, a Black Caribbean diplomat; Trevor Smith, a white far-right party leader; and Charles Henry-Williams, a white government official. Each man addresses an audience, be that a political rally, a clandestine far right meeting, or a government committee. King-Dorset therefore addressed the Playhouse audience directly, but not in a fourth wall bust. Rather, we were invited to morph as surely as the actor on stage, a device that was both effective and disconcerting. When the diplomat Ramsey gave a rousing speak, members of the audience felt obliged to applause, such was the power and righteous fury with which the sentiments expressed were delivered. Conversely, when the racist Ramsey encouraged the audience, again and again, to sing Rule Britania, it took considerable willpower to resist joining in. Some did, the subtext perhaps escaping them, in what was an excruciating episode in the play. But then Marcus Ramsey, a foul mouthed, Estuary accented heavy drinker, was responsible for much excruciating unpleasantness. Were it not for the assurance that King-Dorset had carefully researched all aspects of the show, I'd have thought this man a broad-brush caricature. The thought that Ramsay was an accurate portrayal of views privately expressed in this country was truly sickening. There were times during this play when I confess I didn't what to be there, not because it wasn't good, but because the mirror it was holding up cast too grotesque a reflection.
Sitting somewhere on the line between these two men, Charles Henry-Williams was the civil servant tasked with carrying out the policy of aggressive prosecution of immigrants by the incumbent Tory party. After the debacle of Boris Johnson’s premiership there has been a tendency to lionise Teresa May, so it was well to be reminded that she was in charge when the Windrush immigrants were hounded mercilessly. No doubt conscious that he was playing to an onside audience, King-Dorset was light on exposition, trusting us to keep up, though even the well-informed would have been shocked by quite how deep the abuse of power went. To that extend, it was individuals such as Henry-Williams - men that consider themselves mere functionaries - that were truly to blame, rather than the repellent clowning that the likes of Smith carried on from the side-lines. For all his hideous views, King-Dorset manages to invest Smith with a degree of humanity noticeably absent from the notionally more reasonable Henry-Williams. I was reminded of Spike Jones, passing judgement over a slave owner with a conscious in 9 Years a Slave. He's worse than any of them, said Jones, because he knows what he's doing is wrong, yet keeps on doing it.
There's a twist at the end of the play I'm not sure works, as King-Dorset the writer can't resist the inclination to offer resolution. Apart from being implausible, I think it weakens the drama, offering too neat a conclusion to an episode which the rest of the play ably demonstrates was a messy web of maliciousness, political expediency and straightforward ignorance. Set aside that miss-step, though, and this was a powerfully performed, completely absorbing examination of what, in the years since it was first performed as a 20 minute play in the summer of 2022, has become not so much a secret, as a widely acknowledged scandal. Rodreguez King-Dorset does us all a great service in insuring it is a scandal that isn't easily forgotten.
