Purlie Victorious receives its UK debut with a romp of a rehearsed reading

Until now, Ossie Davis’s Purlie Victorious (A Non-Confederate Romp through the Cotton Patch) had not been professionally performed in the UK.

In fact, despite there also being a musical iteration (with little involvement from the playwright), and a film adaptation of the play (retitled as Gone Are The Days!), the first major revival took place on Broadway in 2023, just shy of 60 years after its debut. It was a Tony Award-winning hit.

“It’s weird that the play has been ignored for so long,” says Ako Mitchell, who’s playing Gitlow in the rehearsed reading of the piece at Curve. “I actually think it’s because it is incredibly radical. Reading it today, it’s saying things that are not often said.”

The piece follows a preacher who returns to his rural town to save the local church with a scheme to trick the local plantation owner. It’s a serious piece, sure, but it’s also side-splittingly hilarious.

Owen Chaponda, who’s playing the title role, suggests that within the Black community, there’s “an idea that we don’t want to carry on seeing our trauma being portrayed all the time.”

Standing to smash down stereotypes, the performer says that his character, who smiles throughout almost all of the play, symbolises “that we are witty, we are smart, we are educated. We are more than just the stereotype that we’re given.”

As a cast, many of them have appeared at Curve in productions by Black writers that explore the Black experience, like Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop. The latter started as a rehearsed reading and starred Justina Kehinde, who is now on directorial duties.

Kehinde calls Purlie Victorious “a great piece of work from the African American canon,” explaining, “[it] highlights the experiences of African American peoples and the experiences of racism, and also how one works to overcome and works to dismantle these systems of oppression.”

“What Purlie Victorious does beautifully is that it protests through humour. Through these theatrical energies and these beautiful characters that are so nuanced that you’re able to fully feel engaged, and not feel like the trauma is truly just hitting you all the time. I think that’s amazing,” Chaponda adds, “It allows us to feel seen and not feel like we’re back in that space where the trauma is weighing on us.”

For the director, it was the fact that a large part of the piece is set on a plantation in Georgia where people pick cotton that drew her to the piece. “On top of the racism, it’s a play that explores the exploitation of labour,” she starts. It isn’t lost on this Midlands writer that the staging is taking place in Leicester, where modern slavery reports emerged in recent years.

“We’re living in a society right now where we have incredible racial division, and incredible segregation is happening again, and also awful forms of labour exploitation are still existing. So it’s a play that I hope an audience will see and think and also be able to reflect on where we are now and what we need to do to not repeat these cycles.”

She explains that the play is formed of three acts broken down into two or three main scenes, which will be performed like the Broadway revival – straight through. At the end of each big scene, Davis has written “curtain”.

Kehinde will be using these moments for pause and reflection. “There’s so much dialogue and there’s so much playfulness in the language, and so I really want that to sing in the scenes so they feel energised and very alive,” she confirms, “Having small moments of repose as we prepare for the next scene allows reflection on the historical context within which the play was both written in and that it was speaking about, and also mirroring that onto contemporary context as well.”

As an aside, David Tarkenter, who’s playing Ol’ Cap’n jokes: “Hopefully the breath will allow people to think about the political points that are being made, because actually, as the show is going on, they’ll be laughing too much.”

He adds: “I’m a big fan of using comedy to get your message across, and there are some very pointed points made throughout the play. We seem to be taking backward steps, and that should be highlighted.”

Once the suckerpunch lands, the company hopes it will leave a lasting impression, as what Kehinde suggests about mirroring today is discussed.

“History is cyclical. We see this churn and we’re heading back there again, with this increase in authoritarianism across the world,” says Tarkenter, “…It’s absolutely crucial that we have plays like this. But more importantly that we must not forget to never get complacent.”

Mitchell comments that he’s pleased that it is the straight play rather than the musical that is enjoying a resurgence, saying: “I think that [music] can sometimes be distracting, especially with work that features the African diaspora… Let’s just get to the heart of these issues in front of us. [Davis] has given us a text that is so rich and engaging, and as I’m exploring it, I’m finding more and more and more depth.”

He added: “It seems like maybe this is the time people are ready to engage with the material rather than anything else. We’re in a post-Hamilton world where we’re having different conversations. So it’s time for this conversation to be had.”

Across our interview, it becomes clear that this is something of a passion project for Kehinde. The company looks to her, her knowledge, and her research as a guiding light. For the rehearsed reading, they haven’t had very long together, and audiences can expect to see open books.

“Sometimes when we want to go to the theatre for a spectacle and we want to be entertained, there can be something quite passive that happens in that where we sit back and allow these artists to entertain us,” Kehinde starts, “And I think the joy of a rehearsed reading is that part of the spectacle is the engagement of the audience in watching people finding a story and being part of that and getting a sense of the potential of what could be.”

She suggests that the approach may enable and empower audiences to ask more questions than they would with a finished production. “So I hope anyone coming comes with the sense that you are also part of the rehearsed reading. We are rehearsing how we tell this story with the public and what that looks like, and that should be fun and entertaining in its own way.”

Mitchell adds: “It’s a great thing to start important conversations, and hopefully in a way that is not sentimental or oppressive, but not light either. Instead, in a way that’s very engaging of the heart and the mind.”

Even as we talk the day before the first performance, the readings take place from 30 October to 1 November at Curve, Leicester, the curious company insists that “the piece is still coming alive.”

“We’re putting flesh on the bones of these skeletons and bringing it to life.”

In the words of Mitchell, an audience rarely gets to see how the sausage gets made, and you could be right at the start of a victorious romp.