Sidney Poitier faces a moral dilemma under Hollywood’s racist gaze in the brilliantly tense Retrograde

Writer Ryan Calais Cameron zooms in on a pivotal meeting in 1955 Hollywood

Ivanno Jeremiah delivers a standout performance as Poitier, capturing both his innate dignity and composure (Marc Brenner)

The bluster and wisecracks of 1950s American showbiz bubble through this witty biographical drama from Ryan Calais Cameron, transferring to the West End after a hit run at Kiln Theatre in 2023. At first, it feels like we’re worlds away from his serious-minded breakout play, For Black Boys, an unsparingly powerful excavation of Black masculinity. That intensity feels especially distant in this play's jaunty opening scene, where two white telly bigwigs swap one-liners and talk up the studio’s potential new star Sidney Poitier. But once Ivanno Jeremiah steps onstage as Poitier, the mood starts to shift, this little office scorched by burning issues of racial prejudice and McCarthyism.

Calais Cameron sets his story on a seesaw moment of social change. Before the 1950s, white-led studios were petrified to cast Black actors in anything other than subservient, caricatured, minor parts. Then something shifted, as the dawning civil rights movement amplified the demand for more empowering roles and more truthful stories. Here, idealistic younger studio employee Bobby (Oliver Johnstone) gets future star Poitier through the door by insisting that he’s purer than pure, an honest family man with two kids and a baby on the way, who runs a hole-in-the-wall Harlem ribs restaurant between acting gigs. Larger-than-life company lawyer Mr Parks is unimpressed: Stanley Townsend is a joy to watch as this corporate bear, swiping down Bobby’s self-aggrandising nonsense with broad swinging one-liners. “Remember, if the phone doesn't ring, it's me,” he bellows on his way out.

Then, Poitier shows up to sign his contract – or so he thinks. Jeremiah’s standout performance as the soon-to-be pioneering actor captures both his innate dignity and composure, and his queasy confusion as he realises he’s being misled and trapped at every turn in director Amit Sharma's perfectly pitched production. Calais Cameron’s ingeniously engineered script keeps shifting the ground Poitier stands on, as master manipulator Mr Parks gasses him up, then punctures him by reminding him of his “place”, before terrifying him with career-wrecking accusations of communism.

Poitier has two massive obstacles standing in the way of his future career: racial prejudice, and a teeming FBI file charting his associations with left-leaning causes and figures including civil rights activist Harry Belafonte. The crux of this play is a deal-with-the-devil scenario, where signing away his principles will clear his path to fame. Will he do it?

Retrograde explores Poitier’s painful choice between lucrative spinelessness and broke integrity, without really leaving us in much doubt about what he'll choose to do. When he finds his voice, Jeremiah's speeches get cheers from an audience won over by his everyman honesty.

This isn’t a morally complicated story, really. But it’s a hugely satisfying one – a well-crafted period piece with lots to say about the present-day pressures on minority artists at the mercy of corporate agendas. And it’s lit up with so many moments of pure, awkward, hilarity, too: as when a mortified Bobby is forced into a rendition of Belafonte’s “Day-O” by his silver-tongued boss – realising just how uncomfortable it is to sing along to someone else’s tune.

At the Apollo Theatre until 15 June