A terrific two-hander that belongs at the National: RSC’s Kunene and the King reviewed

The Gift is three plays in one. It opens in a blindingly white Victorian parlour where a posh lady, Sarah, is teaching her clumsy maid to serve tea correctly. Both characters are black. Sarah’s prosperous husband, also black, arrives home and the scene continues as the gauche skivvy (Donna Berlin, brilliant) makes more and more hilarious blunders. What is this play? Perhaps a neglected Victorian comedy revived with colour-blind casting. In fact, the script is inspired by a historical character, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a Yoruba princess born in Nigeria in the 19th century, who was adopted by Queen Victoria and raised as an English gentlewoman.

A drama about a solitary black female living in high Victorian society would be fascinating, but the writer, Janice Okoh, has thrown in two extra black characters, Sarah’s husband and the maid. These additions seem improbable but the play doesn’t give a hoot about distinctions of fact and fiction as long as it can make everyone laugh. Which it does. It’s also extremely confusing.

The action shifts to present-day Cheshire where a prosperous black couple are enjoying a quiet night in. Ding dong. Their white neighbours arrive with a gift of gluten-free cakes. The wife is desperate to flaunt her success in a TV baking competition but she pretends to find her notoriety embarrassing. The subject of race crops up, of course, and the white pair strive to demonstrate their lack of prejudice. The dialogue, often brilliantly funny, touches on taboo subjects such as the fact that black athletes predominate in track and field events but rarely win swimming trophies. ‘Black people can swim,’ explains the white woman, ‘but choose not to because of their hair.’ To prove her affiliation with black culture she performs a pastiche of a Beyoncé disco-orgasm in the sitting room.