Feature: The Jubilee Singers - Play by Highgate poet Adrian Mitchell

Published: 13 May 2010
by DAN CARRIER

A PLAY by writer Adrian Mitchell that has never been performed makes its debut this weekend on Radio 4.

The Jubilee Singers is set to be broadcast on Saturday – 30 years after the work was penned by the poet who lived in Dartmouth Park.

And the subject is one that casts fresh light on the passions of Adrian, who was dubbed the alternative Poet Laureate for his rousing political poetry, and who died two years ago.

The Jubilee Singers were a Victorian choir made up of black students singing spirituals. Established by the Tennessee Fisk University in 1860, they toured  to raise cash for the trail-blazing institute, which offered higher education for black people in an era of segregation and when slavery was still a political issue. 

“They were desperate to raise cash, so a music teacher came up with the idea of a setting up a choir to perform,” says Adrian’s widow, Celia. “They became a big hit. They decided to come to Europe, go on tour, and make their university lots of money.”

Adrian thought the Jubilee Singers would make excellent material for a play and was commissioned by National Theatre director Richard Eyre to write it. But it took so long to research and create that it was never performed.

Now it has been adapted for the radio by Celia.

“He bought books about the Jubilee Singers all his life,” she recalls.

It was partly because of the influence of his mother Kathleen, she says: “When Adrian was a small boy, his mother took him to see the great black American singer Paul Robeson.

“He saw Robeson at Stratford, with Peggy Ashcroft, and also at the Albert Hall. He was incredibly moved and touched by the performances and became a fan for the    rest of his life. 

“He was keen on spirituals, having heard Robeson perform, and he then later found a book about the Jubilee Singers. They were like a pop group in Victorian times, and he was intrigued, and he got this idea of writing about them.” 

Adrian launched into  researching their history. This entailed heading to Fisk in Nashville, where there is still a choir, to trawl their archives. And it was while in America he discovered a quirky passage of the choir’s history that gave him the key he needed to write the play.

“He came across a report from a Welsh newspaper journalist who had become absolutely fascinated by them as they toured Britain in the 1870s,” says Celia.

In the articles the reporter filed about their trips to England, Adrian discovered that the singers were favourites of Queen Victoria and were invited to meet the Queen, while the Prime Minister, Gladstone, was also taken by their music and made sure he was present when they visited Windsor. The reports from the time noted how he was happy to serve the singers tea.

Adrian continued to read about them – “he collected boxes of notes,” recalls Celia – and then finally settled down to write the play, with the idea of the leading man – the Welsh journalist – being played by Jonathan Pryce. Pryce agreed, but it took Adrian so long to write the play that by the time he had finished it things at the National had changed and Richard Eyre had left to be replaced by Trevor Nunn.

The play tells the stories of the singers’ lives and backgrounds: their songs drew on the legacy of oppression, racism and slavery, and told the stories of black Americans. And while it has not made the stage – yet – the original lead, Jonathan Pryce, has recorded the role he was originally intended for, while the music is provided by a number of well-known opera singers. 

“The most moving thing is hearing them sing these songs that meant so much to the choir’s history, and so much to Adrian,” says Celia.

• The Jubilee Singers by Adrian Mitchell will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday May 15 at 2.30pm