Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s musical premiered in New York in 2005 and is based on an American novel by Sherley Anne Williams, a story of slavery from a woman’s point of view, and written in response to William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. Williams was inspired by two historical facts. In 1829 a pregnant slave led a rebellion against the slave traders. A white woman in 1830 provided a safe haven for runaway slaves. Williams brought the two women together. Divided though they are by prejudice, they eventually join forces and cheat the slave traders out of their money.
Cassidy Janson is the white woman plantation owner who, deserted by her husband, takes a black lover. Cynthia Erivo, who scored a big success in The Color Purple at the Menier Chocolate Factory and I Can’t Sing! at the London Palladium, is the slave who is raped, beaten and arrested for murder. There are also notable performances by Edward Baruwa as the black lover and Jon Robyns as a white reporter who isn’t as charming as he at first seems.
Ahrens and Flaherty are probably best known in the UK for their musical, Ragtime. The present show’s strength is the music, a mixture of blues, gospel, waltz, folk and vaudeville. The singing and acting are of the highest order and director Andrew Keates achieves miracles in a tiny space. The production, however, really does need a larger theatre. The actors are cramped, the sight-line are not good (too much masking) and the sound engineer has not got it right. The miked singers, when they sing, are too loud and when they talk you can’t always hear what they say. Dessa Rose, nevertheless, is well worth catching.