Retrograde

Written by Ryan Cameron Calais

Directed by Amit Sharma

Apollo Theatre London, 2025

Review by Vayu Naidu

In 1964 Sidney Poitier won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Lilies of the Field. In his acceptance speech, the Bahamian and African American actor dissolved into tears, recognising the ‘long journey to this moment’ that rested on ‘countless numbers of people’, including his parents, who were poor tomato farmers from a British dominion. Born prematurely, Poitier was not expected to live.  But his mother had consulted a soothsayer who told her: ‘Don’t worry about your son, he will survive and will not be a sickly child. He will walk with kings. He will be rich and famous. Your name will be carried all over the world.’

Poitier’s progress to stardom seemed natural but it was based on talent, hard work and good fortune. The actor’s authenticity was informed by the realisation, early on, that being Black meant many doors of opportunity were closed to him; doors that would open only in relation to white supremacy. Poitier was inspired by Paul Robeson  and Harry Belafonte, a comrade in activism during the years that led to the Civil Rights Movement.

Black British playwright Ryan Calais Cameron has sought  to capture a decisive moment in Poitier’s career when he saw through the veils of deception in the hierarchies of TV and film and made an irrevocable choice. Calais Cameron’s play Retrograde begins on a sultry afternoon in 1955 in the office of NBC lawyer Mr Parks (Stanley Townsend). Bobby (Oliver Johnstone), a young director, is signing his contract for a prime time TV script with his choice of lead actor, Sidney Poitier (Ivanno Jeremiah), ‘blacker than Harry Belafonte, black-black.’  As overseas immigrants, Bobby and Poitier share a belief in the American Dream.

Many social codes are explored in this lawyer’s office. Celebration: is it appropriate to drink before a contract is signed? Relaxation: is it prudent to tell a tale with humour and in a Jamaican accent? Adoption of American values: to what degree should those values be determined by Parks? 

A ‘getting to know Sidney’ exercise by Parks turns into a devious ploy to frame the actor as a communist through his associations with Paul Robeson and Dr Martin Luther King Jr. In an aside to Bobby, Parks clearly states the need for expediency, such as accepting segregation and being excluded from certain civil liberties, as examples of upholding American values. Poitier argues conversely that there is an emerging Civil Rights Movement amongst Americans that will be unstoppable. 

NBC television network is worried that a Black actor playing the lead in Bobby’s film will put off sponsors and lose money. The word has also spread that Sidney is fiercely selective about the roles that he as a Black man is prepared to play. Bizarrely, Parks seizes on this as pro-communist and anti-US government. Parks has drawn up a legal document in advance that insists that Sidney sign an oath denouncing Paul Robeson. And there’s the rub. 

Parks’s personal vendetta reflects the nervous system of NBC. Sidney is placed in a vice-like grip, with the threat of being black-listed by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) and under surveillance by the FBI. Nonetheless, Sidney sees clearly how, despite the malicious wrangling, he is a prized asset for Parks and NBC. The question of compromise is at the centre of the play. ‘What do you have when you have the world and lost your soul?’  

Retrograde left me feeling appalled at how accustomed and gullible we have become to the narratives of fear fed to us; but I also left the theatre full of admiration for how, even before examples of social activism such as the Montgomery Bus boycott, men like Paul Robeson and Sidney Poitier worked against the tide of poverty to hold on to a belief in the strength of alliances between minority communities. 

Retrograde is a historical drama that resonates today, a drama in which language, particularly the language of theatre, holds up a mirror to society to get to the heart of prejudice, to the truth about inequality and what freedom means. 

Vayu Naidu

Vayu Naidu’s storytelling spans diaspora, urban, epic, folk and tribal stories inspired by multiple literary and performance traditions.