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Ryan Calais Cameron is the author of the multi-award winning For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide when the Hue Gets Too Heavy. His new play is a tribute to Sidney Poitier, a great American actor and advocate of racial equality who stood up to the Establishment and put his career and family at risk. The incident recorded in Retrograde took place in Hollywood in 1955 during the notorious Senator McCarthy communist witchhunt era. 28-year-old Poitier is about to sign a contract to play the leading role in A Man is Ten Feet Tall, a television drama for NBC; but first, NBC wants him to sign an oath of loyalty to the USA and denounce Paul Robeson publicly as a communist. Cameron’s play is about the moral dilemma he faces. Will he compromise his integrity for a big break in Hollywood? Will he put his potential career at risk and be blacklisted? Poitier would go on to be the first black American actor to become a major movie star. In 1958 he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in The Defiant Ones. In 1963 he was the first black actor to win the Best Actor award for Lilies of the Field. The 90-minute play, without interval, is sharply written, sharply directed by Amit Sharma and sharply acted by the three actors. Ivanno Jeremiah has the talent and charisma to play Poitier. He holds one of the longest pauses before he signs a contract with total confidence. The audience knows the outcome yet audibly holds its breath. Stanley Townsend is NBC’s lawyer, a thoroughly nasty piece of work. Oliver Johnstone is Poitier’s close but inept friend, a liberal scriptwriter, worried about his own career. The confrontations are fully charged and involving. An unexpected response with a dramatic slap on the face had the audience cheering. The witty dialogue is delivered at a fast and aggressive pace. One particular retort – “Your arse must be pretty jealous of your mouth with all that shit coming out of it” – will almost certainly find its way into dictionaries of modern slang. To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website.
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