In 1950s, a young Black actor called Sidney Poitier is offered a contract that can make his career. He’s still scratching a living running a streetside food stall, even though he’s made a well received film called The Blackboard Jungle.  This is the stuff of the American dream.

But half of Hollywood is terrified of Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, and the other half is in cahoots with it.  So before Poitier gets the contract, he must sign a “loyalty oath” and publicly denounce Paul Robeson.

That, really, is the story of Retrograde, except that I haven’t told you how it ends.  On this one incident, playwright Ryan Calais Cameron has built a tense, thoughtful and gripping 90-minute play, which is performed straight through without an interval, probably because director Amit Sharma did not want to break the tension.

At first sight it looks like a play about race, about the experience of being black in America, but it’s really more about politics and political freedom. What they hold against Paul Robeson is not so much that he’s Black, as that he’s a socialist.  Poitier will be allowed to have a successful career as a Black actor, so long as he provides ammunition against Robeson, and promises to say only the correct things.