On April 08, 2026 a new stage piece, The Authenticator, arrived in the National Theatre’s smallest space, the Dorfman. The production brings together playwright Winsome Pinnock and director Miranda Cromwell for a work that deliberately straddles genres: part investigative drama, part gothic caper, part black comedy. Audiences are invited into a stately house where the discovery of old papers forces questions about ownership, memory and the consequences of the past. This introduction sets the tone for an evening that uses humour as a lens to examine the heavy subject of the legacy of slavery, while also leaning into theatrical thrills and uncanny moments to unsettle the viewer.
Plot and central characters
The narrative follows three principal figures who converge at Hartford House to assess a trove of mid-18th-century documents. The visitors — the near-professor Abi (played by Rakie Ayola), her bright but vulnerable mentee Marva (Cherrelle Skeete), and the present-day inheritor Fen (Sylvestra Le Touzel) — each bring different stakes to the project. The records they examine include inventories that list people alongside livestock, a detail that propels much of the play’s moral and emotional tension. The house functions as more than backdrop: it is a repository of family myth, financial compromise and public-facing performance, and the characters’ interactions gradually reveal how identities are informed by both genealogical fact and social narrative.
Tone, genre and staging choices
Pinnock advertises the piece as a gothic psychological thriller, and the production embraces that label without fully settling into it. Designer Jon Bausor’s traverse setting presents a fading great hall, a rising staircase and a candle-lit lower space that conjures both melodrama and museum display. Stagecraft generates a sense of unease — the house seems to creak under historical weight — while the script allows for moments of levity. That tonal shuttling creates a delicate balance: humour often disarms the audience, but it also complicates how the play asks viewers to reckon with the afterlives of enslavement and the uneasy commerce of heritage tourism in stately homes.
Visual and acoustic details
Onstage objects are charged with meaning: a Blackamoor statuette is treated as a curated embarrassment, and the revelation of private rooms gradually shifts the power dynamics between host and guests. Lighting and sound design underline the play’s shifts from comic banter to ominous discovery, while the physicality of the staircase and the lower chamber make the house itself an active participant. These choices support the production’s interest in how material culture encodes history — the way an object is framed, catalogued, or hidden alters its story — and force the audience to ask what it takes to make an honest public record.
Performance and character dynamics
The three performers create a tense triangular chemistry that fuels much of the piece’s momentum. Marva’s response to the documents is visceral and personal, given her ancestry as a descendant of Ghanaian slaves, whereas Fen gestures toward polite stewardship and the practical burdens of maintaining a heritage property. Abi occupies an ambivalent position: from a wealthy Nigerian background she brings expertise but also her own entanglements, including family histories connected to exploitative practices. Pinnock peels back these identities in layers, interrogating concepts of authenticity, restitution and the politics of who gets to narrate the past, even when those layers sometimes strain credulity for the sake of dramatic movement.
Critical reception and debate
Reviews have been mixed, reflecting the play’s hybrid ambitions. Some critics praised its nimble humour and sharp dialogue as a compelling way to ask difficult questions about race and inheritance; others felt the piece skates across too many modes and leaves unresolved dramatic threads. Across outlets there is agreement that the production is provocative and often entertaining, even if opinions diverge on whether comedy is the right vehicle for the subject matter. The conversation provoked by the play — about theatrical form, historical accountability and the ethics of representation — is arguably as important as any tidy resolution on stage.
Conclusion: what the play leaves on the table
The Authenticator is an encounter piece: it stages confrontation rather than offering definitive answers. Its mixture of wryness, threat and archival curiosity asks audiences to weigh the pleasures of a well-crafted theatrical puzzle against the gravity of the histories it unearths. Whether the juxtaposition of laughs and unease lands for you will depend on your tolerance for tonal risk, but the production undeniably puts pressing questions into the room. The show runs at the National Theatre until 9 May 2026, giving viewers an opportunity to judge for themselves and to decide how theatre can best hold difficult pasts in the present.