Event Description
- Content advice: Contains coarse language and mature themes including racially sensitive commentary and depictions of racism.
Director Bert LaBonté (Topdog/Underdog) steers this alarmingly timely and ‘wickedly funny’ (The Standard) work starring newcomer Donné Ngabo (Last Days) and international screen star Alan Dale (24, The O.C.) to its blistering conclusion.
It’s the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, fuelled by big money and heady ambition. Paranoia simmers beneath the surface and McCarthyism casts a shadow of fear. A young Sidney Poitier arrives at a television studio with a career-defining opportunity on the table. All that stands between him and a breakout lead role is a signature on a contract – or so he thinks. When the network’s fast-talking lawyer begins firing loaded questions, and the screenwriter’s loyalty to Poitier is called into question, the meeting takes a sinister turn and the cost of ambition becomes alarmingly clear.
Hailed a ‘brilliantly tense’ (The Independent) triumph in its celebrated West End run, this witty interrogation of identity, power and integrity conjures a real encounter from Poitier’s past, ten years before he would become the first Black man to win the Best Actor Oscar. "Retrograde" exposes the racial fault lines beneath Hollywood’s glossy facade and the choices faced by those who dared to cross them.
One room, one conversation, everything at stake.
- Playwright: Ryan Calais Cameron
- Director: Bert LaBonté
- Cast includes: Alan Dale and Donné Ngabo
