Mandatory Angel Theatre Firm Manufacturing in Affiliation with Canadian Stage and Tarragon Theatre: Moonlight Schooner (world premiere). Kanika Ambrose, playwright; Sabryn Rock, director; with Nehassaiu deGannes; danjelani ellis; Daren A. Herbert; Tony Ofori; Jamie Robinson. Thomas Ryder Payne, sound designer; Shannon Lea Doyle, set designer; Raha Javanfar, lighting designer. Berkeley Avenue Theatre, November 26, 2025. Continues till December 14; tickets here.
It’s 1958, and a gaggle of Black sailors are stranded on the island of St. Kitts after a storm washes them ashore. Their ship, the titular Moonlight Schooner, wants fixing, and their futures are undecided — but it surely’s additionally Could Day. All the pieces is closed, and a celebration invitations them to throw away their cares for at the least one night time of enjoyable.
They discuss, they argue, they reminisce, and multiple battle breaks out, and thru all of it, their tales start to flesh out a portrait of a technology set adrift, figuratively and actually. Each their sympathetic and darker sides emerge because the occasions of each the previous and current unfold.
It’s not fully essential to know the total historic background, however let’s delve into it.
Historic Context
When the HMT Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury, Essex in 1948, it might develop into the primary of many ships that introduced passengers from the Caribbean to the UK. Many had served in WWII for the UK, they usually got here on the invitation of presidency officers to assist rebuild the nation after the ravages of the Second World Battle.
As some extent of reality, the British Nationality Act of 1948 had given folks from British colonies the correct to stay and work within the UK. International locations throughout the Caribbean have been struggling, and many individuals took them up on the supply, searching for jobs and a greater life. Most turned drivers, cleaners, and different handbook labourers, along with nurses in what was then the newly established Nationwide Well being Service (NHS).
It’s estimated that greater than half 1,000,000 UK residents have been born in a Commonwealth nation (dubbed the Windrush technology), and arrived within the UK earlier than 1971, when the brand new Immigration Act gave these residents the correct to remain.
As a aspect notice, in 2018, it was revealed that a lot of these new arrivals weren’t given the right paperwork to show their proper to remain, and near 100 have been wrongly deported. Whereas it’s peripheral to this play, it underscores the scenario of these Black Commonwealth residents who got the correct to return to the UK, however by no means afforded true equality.
The Story
The story begins with the storm that washes the boys ashore in St. Kitts. The characters start to emerge by their conversations, the tales they inform, and their interactions. Shabine (Jamie Robinson) is central to the story. He’s one thing of a poet and author, jotting his ideas down in a pocket book he retains in his pocket. He’s additionally bought a white grandfather who gave him lighter pores and skin, one thing the opposite three comment on — but it surely doesn’t, as they observe, give him any extra alternatives in life than the remainder of them.
danjelani ellis is Vincy, the youngest. He comes throughout as feckless, dwelling just for the following drink, at the least at first. Daren A. Herbert is Timothy, feisty and swaggering, and Tony Ofori is Lyle, the native who’s invited the three to remain within the dwelling he shares along with his mom, Janine (Nehassaiu deGannes). As Janine factors out, it’s a big home on a hill, with loads of land, because of her husband who’s been sending a refund from England. Kudos to dialect coach Peter N. Bailey, who’s created a definite type of speech and accent for every character. Shabine’s dialect is downplayed, in distinction with Timothy and the others.
It begins with the camaraderie of survivors. Vincy vomits, each from the catastrophe at sea and all of the alcohol he drank the night time earlier than.
“I’m fortunate I stay to take the scent of your deliver up,” Shabine tells him.
When Vincy desires to maintain ingesting, Shabine scolds him, and tries to remove the booze. He’s the wiser, older man of the group. However Vincy reveals the shrewd evaluation of his scenario that underlies the partying and careless behaviour. As a result of, the place does the alcohol come from? England, in fact.
“The one factor they’d by no means cease sending Black man is drink,” he tells Shabine.
There are fireworks early on between Shabine, who sees himself because the extra cultured and erudite of the trio, and Timothy.
The tales they inform one another, and their conversations, are shot by with moments of humour. However, because the tales unfold, a way more difficult actuality involves the fore. When Shabine reminisces, it typically sparks a flashback scene the place the reality emerges. Maria, the spouse he opines over in poetic writings, is seemingly both pregnant or nursing a new child on a steady foundation.
Is he actually the extra educated, considerate man he presents?
Methods to higher your lot in life, find out how to higher your self, turns into a recurring theme. There are few choices in St. Kitts or anyplace within the Caribbean, and something that has a cloth worth, from the land Janine and Lyle stay on to the tweed material her husband sends again, comes from England. Hopes, wishes, desires are thwarted, with solely the ever current spectres of imperialism and colonial historical past to supply a approach ahead.
Shabine desires to get again to the ship and assist rebuild, but it surely’s Could Day, a nationwide vacation when all the things’s closed, and a giant and public celebration beckons. Ultimately, even Shabine is satisfied to take a break from their actuality with a day and night time of celebration.
However, actuality has a approach of intruding.
Whereas the protagonists are all male, Ambrose’s play doesn’t shrink back from depicting the plight of girls on this world. Janine, together with her heels and classy attire, has discovered a approach of creating the most effective of a scenario that has taken her husband far-off with a view to present for the household. When Lyle desires to make the identical journey, she tells the reality.
“A lot younger males leaving, they usually say they’re coming again — however they by no means do.”
When Vincy wonders why the younger, robust, vibrant girls he meets of their 20s develop into bitter and burdened by the point they’re of their 30s, Shabine is aware of the reality. It’s the fixed procession of infants, and ready round for the boys of their lives to point out up that weighs them down.
Performances
Jamie Robinson is the guts of the story as Shabine. He embodies the duality of his character — older and maybe wiser than the others, however solely as a result of he’s already carried out all the things he argues in opposition to. He appears tortured by his previous, whilst he glosses over it in his writing, the poet who seemingly writes all the things down, whilst he skirts his personal truths. Robinson is phenomenal in a job that calls for subtlety and a number of layers of intention.
Tony Ofori is a naive Lyle, longing for journey — something that can take him away from his mom’s home, and an setting the place he can’t get forward in any other case. Daren A. Herbert is a testosterone fuelled Timothy, the one who’s unrepentant about his perspective, or what he does in pursuit of a superb time.
danjelani ellis’s Vincy alternates between the affect of Shabine and Timothy, however he’s additionally clear-eyed about his actuality. When Shabine tries to steer him to not take part with the others’ hedonism, he factors out it’s the one solution to get by their directionless lives.
Ofori, Herbert, and ellis additionally double in different roles. ellis is hilarious as certainly one of Shabine’s children within the flashback scenes, and Ofori as his much-pregnant spouse Maria. Ofori and Herbert additionally develop into a Calypso duo who carry out musical interludes in the course of the course of the play, together with a music a few lady who works for an previous white girl, and one other, ‘The mosquito has a proper to chew’.
Nehassaiu deGannes makes a robust case for Janine. Although she has the least time on stage, her cautious class is available in stark distinction to the boys round her. Late within the play, cleansing up after Lyle and the opposite’s celebration, she reveals the skinny nature of that veneer.
Stagecraft
The set design by Shannon Lea Doyle is each atmospheric and ingenious, enhanced by Raha Javanfar’s lighting, with a billowing blue lit curtain on the again that represents the ever current ocean. Picket constructions on both aspect of the stage supply depth, and quite a lot of places. It’s superb how a couple of changes of furnishings, two doorways, and a set of stairs on the again, can change between Janine’s massive dwelling, a bar, a automotive that Lyle drives to take them to city, and even the ship itself.
Particular kudos go to sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne, who provides dimensions to the set with a spread of results, from the sounds of the relentless tides that permeate the theatre earlier than the play even begins, to delicate hen songs and the Could Day crowds within the background, to the thunder of the storm, and extra.
Last Ideas
Ambrose’s play affords a nuanced portrait of the Caribbean in the course of the Windrush period, and complex characters who supply no straightforward solutions or scapegoats apart from the looming shadow of imperialism, and the leftovers of a struggle fought removed from these island shores.
It could be arduous to name it a redemptive or perhaps a heat hearted story. As an alternative, it’s a multi-layered portrait of what occurs in a society the place desires and aspirations are so totally crushed, and diverted to a path not their very own.
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a inventive writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
