Written for Joint Stock, this theatre company's workshop for the play was "sexual politics", thus giving Caryl Churchill the idea for her parallel between colonial and sexual oppression. Act I takes place in Victorian Africa, whilst Act II is set in modern London. Much interplay is made of gender and colour: for example, Clive, the white settler, has a black servant, Joshua, who is played by a white because he wants to be what the whites want him to be. Hilarious and thought-provoking.
