Review – The Meaning of Zong – Liverpool Playhouse

In 1781 the British Navy captured the Dutch slave ship Zong and shortly afterwards sold it to a syndicate of Liverpool ship owners headed by former Liverpool Mayor William Gregson. Later that same year, the Zong was bound for Jamaica, laden with more than double its intended complement of African slaves.

Midway through the voyage, claiming to be short of drinking water, the crew jettisoned almost a third of their human ‘cargo’, throwing 132 Africans into the sea to their deaths. Naturally the ship’s owners had their merchandise insured, and an insurance claim was made against the monetary value of the lives lost, a claim that was challenged in court by the insurers.

Two years later the writer Olaudah Equiano, himself a former slave now using the name Gustavus Vassa, reported on the events and set in motion a criminal investigation which ultimately became influential in the eventual movement for abolition of the slave trade.

Giles Terrera’s debut play The Meaning of Zong sees Terrera himself both directing and cast in the role of Equiano/Vassa, and in a series of flashback-like episodes it dramatises his journals, the massacre on the Zong, and parts of the ensuing trial. The play opens and closes with a framing device, in which a modern day reader takes a bookshop manager to task for filing Equiano’s memoirs in the wrong section of the shop, highlighting the way in which such writings are still often seen as a curious piece of history rather than increasingly important documents about the trade in human lives.

Although at times the way in which the action is tossed about and broken up like flotsam on the ocean makes the narrative a little murky, the piece still succeeds in delivering the story with immense power and impact. Terrera’s writing has a potency that overcomes the fragmented nature of its telling. It is terrifying to contemplate that in the prevailing climate of the time the matter of insurance fraud was taken seriously while the commission of mass murder was swept under the carpet. Less surprising really, when you consider that slave ship owners like Gregson (and his son who also went on to be Mayor of Liverpool just 3 years after the massacre) were considered to be men of the highest standing.

The skeletal set by Jean Chan morphs from bookshop to Westminster Hall and the bowels of the ill-fated vessel itself, while a soundscape that relies heavily on percussion instruments played onstage by Sidiki Dembele adds urgency and intensity to the action.

Pandemic restrictions delayed the initial production of the play, seeing it performed during lockdown as a rehearsed reading and as a radio play. But, now it has been brought dramatically to life in this Bristol Old Vic production, it is fitting that it should appear onstage in the cities of Bristol and Liverpool, where the roots of its story are buried deep in the soil of our quaysides and its threads woven into the fabric of our surroundings.

And the Meaning of Zong? Ironically, the ship’s actual name under its Dutch ownership was really Zorg, which in Dutch means concern or care, something we need more of considering that slavery continues to be a thriving trade across many parts of the globe.

Star rating – 4½ stars

 

Alice Vilanculo, Kiera Lester and Bethan Mary-James - image © Curtis Richard

Kiera Lester - image © Curtis Richard

Michael Elcock & Giles Terera - image © Curtis Richard

This review was originally written for publication by Good News Liverpool