Blood of my Blood ★★★ Royal Court Theatre | Oct 1 - Nov 7, 2026

When Talulah leaves London to trace her ancestry, the journey takes her to the small town of Bullock Creek, South Carolina. The plantation where her five-times-great-grandmother Ginnie was enslaved is now a bed and breakfast run by Nora and her husband, James, a descendant of the original owners. Talulah hopes to contact the spirits of her ancestors to seek an answer to a question about her own circumstances. Instead, her visit raises the spectres of a troubled history that continues to haunt the American South and its inheritors. It prompts broader questions about how the historically oppressed and their oppressors deal with such abuses. In Joy Nesbitt’s Blood of My Blood, the enduring complexities of the relationship between past and present are reflected in the contradictions that shape the characters’ lives. Ginnie is torn between her affection for Doc, her white master, and her fear and resentment of the power he wields over her. As Ginnie, Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ conveys her emotional conflict with powerful authenticity, portraying a woman whose feelings and fears inhibit her ability to free herself from the brutal power imbalance governing her life. Doc, her lover and master, struggles to reconcile his genuine emotional attachment to Ginnie with his position as her enslaver. It is an extreme situation, but it cleverly mirrors the power dynamic at the heart of patriarchy, which persists today. In the present, Doc’s descendant, James, has an academic understanding of history, but this proves no match for his hostility when confronted with his ancestors’ legacy. He can see nineteenth-century South Carolina as a refuge for the abused Irish settlers, but he cannot deal with either their abuse of enslaved people or the notion that those whom they oppressed might have a claim to some form of compensation. To Doc, Patrick Vaill brings a disturbing complexity, allowing glimpses of genuine tenderness to coexist with the entitlement and cruelty of men accustomed to having power over others. As James, he also neatly exposes the limits of intellectual detachment when history becomes personal. Talulah presents another kind of tension: a philosophy student who believes in astrology and summoning the dead. Alongside her rationality sits a curious belief in destiny and preordained circumstances, and Jodie Campbell makes this mixture of philosophical enquiry, spiritual curiosity and uncertainty feel almost credible. She captures a woman searching for answers without fully understanding what she hopes to find. Campbell’s performance is nicely complemented by Hannah Morrish’s nuanced portrayal of James’s wife, Amanda, a liberal-minded Southern belle. Morrish’s convincing Southern accent lends authenticity to Amanda’s superficial giddiness, which disguises an iron will. As Nora, Doc’s wife, Morrish also makes a strong impression, bringing an entirely different texture to that role. Against this web of conflicting loyalties and unresolved histories, Karene Peter’s Bertha, who challenges Ginnie to run away, and the contemporary Niecey emerge as fascinating characters who seem least imprisoned by their circumstances. Bertha possesses a boisterous self-assurance and a clear sense of direction, while Niecey, a PhD student, has found a way to acknowledge her complicated place within the community without allowing its history to define her entirely. Her name itself suggests the racial and social divisions she must negotiate, but she has somehow absorbed the affirmation of the spiritual “You Got a Right to the Tree of Life” and built a place for herself where survival becomes something more than endurance. The play, however, offers little insight into how she has reached this understanding, leaving one of its most intriguing characters insufficiently explored. While Nesbitt raises important questions about historical abuse and its consequences, the play is more successful at describing the characters’ predicaments than it is at probing how they might move beyond them. Niecey’s apparent reconciliation with her past offers a tantalising glimpse of what that process might look like, but the drama stops short of examining it in sufficient depth. In the end, Blood of My Blood is most successful when it exposes the contradictions that bind its characters to history. Although Bertha and Niecey suggest that one can assert oneself and that the past need not dictate the future, the play leaves the difficult question of how to come to terms with the past and break free from its hold largely unanswered, subsuming it in the more basic assertion that we all have a right to live our lives.

Rated: ★★★

Reviewed by J.C.

Photo by Marc Brenner

When, Where, Getting there:

• Oct 1 - Nov 7, 2026
• Mon - Fri: 7:45 pm, Thu: 3 pm, Sat: 2 pm & 6:45 pm
• Royal Court Theatre
• Nearest tube: Sloane Square
• https://royalcourttheatre.com/events/blood-of-my-blood/