The European debut of Claudio Rankine’s The White Card is a searing rumination on racial injustice and white liberalism in the Trump Era and beyond – a deftly crafted production by Northern Stage artistic director, Natalie Ibu.
The set-up is simple enough: a dinner party is hosted by Charles (Pidgeon) and Virginia (Copeland) in their lavishly decorated home, who wish to acquire work of a black artist, Charlotte (Daniels), with the help of their art dealer friend Eric (Blakely). It is this scenario that kicks off a compact 90-minute exploration of racial inequity and injustice in the Trump era. It simultaneously explores the manifestation of the ideology of whiteness, and critiques white liberals and their inability to hold their own prejudices to the same scrutiny that they project onto the more visible forms of racial prejudice they see on the American right.
Following an extraordinary transition scene that literally puts a lens infront of the audience, the second act perhaps is less powerful than the first. Debbie Duru’s seemingly elegant, white decor of the living rooms has a two-fold function –its sloping structure represents both the insularity of the world of white privilege and the diurnal discomfort that individuals from marginalised communities must endure in these spaces. The different contours and layers combined with skilful lighting design by Rajiv Pattani means that the setting itself mutates and is the perfect canvas for a production that explores perspective and representation.
Daniels is exceptional as Charlotte, the young artist whose work has come to the attention of two white people who are interested in art that, they argue, explores injustice. Charlotte bristles at this and sees their pursuit as a form of white privilege – voyeuristic appropriation of the pain that African Americans experience as a lived reality. The dialogue is sharp and dexterous, powerfully rendering a vital discourse on the ethics of artistic responsibility, the manifestations of white supremacy in present times and questioning what allyship means.
Rankine does the difficult job of encapsulating these issues in dramatic form, ripe with tension and discomfort; the audience remains viscerally palpable: wincing, exasperated, indignant, sighing – all can be felt by certain comments spoken by the characters as references and conversations covering Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, Trump, the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville etc. are covered. Since its debut in 2018, the play has become ever more resonant, and two years after the murder of George Floyd, and at the same time of yet another episode of gun violence in America, The White Card boldly invites us to stare the world we live in the face and pay attention.
Check out more from Leeds Playhouse | Find out more about Claudia Rankine| Natalie Ibu| Northern Stage |Birmingham Rep | Soho Theatre | Home Manchester |
| See more Off/Stage Review Bytes on IG |