The Niceties review – race and revolution explode into campus feud

First produced in Boston in 2018, Eleanor Burgess’s play sets up a fierce debate that covers race, revolution, American history and academic process. It’s refreshing to see a genuine play of ideas, and Burgess shows the strengths and flaws of her two antagonists; her even-handedness only deserts her in the play’s unduly protracted second half.

The setting is an elite university in the last year of the Obama presidency and there are just two characters. Janine is a white, sixtysomething history professor who keeps a portrait of George Washington on her wall; Zoe is a 20-year-old black student and an eager participant in campus protest. Battle is joined over a paper Zoe has written claiming that America never had a truly radical revolution because the people really suffering were slaves who had no voice. Janine admits it’s an interesting thesis but demands documentary proof. Zoe counters that the exploited rarely leave evidence behind. This broadens out into a ferocious argument about the partial vision of history taught in the US, with Zoe accusing Janine of racism.

It is stirring stuff in which you see both points of view: Janine, the daughter of Polish immigrants, has faith in American democracy while Zoe is impatient for revolutionary change. But after the interval, the dramatic interest wanes as the two exhausted combatants meet again to reveal their lack of common ground Burgess also introduces side issues such as Janine’s sexual and Zoe’s mental history. Even if Matthew Iliffe’s production looks a tad under-rehearsed, the piece is sustained by its performers. Janie Dee brings out Janine’s impeccable liberal credentials and scholarly orthodoxy while showing a woman shocked into an awareness that a new generation demands more than incremental progress. Moronke Akinola, in her professional debut, captures Zoe’s uncompromising rigour and activist spirit while hinting that her anger conceals a lack of empathy.

It’s a good play but I was disappointed that Burgess finally abandoned her dialectical fairness and allowed herself to take sides.