Retrograde review — a poignant tale of the Hollywood witch hunt

★★★☆☆He's changed direction. Still basking in the acclaim for For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy, the group-therapy psychodrama that completes its West End run next weekend, Ryan Calais Cameron turns to an episode from Hollywood's past. Homing in on the early career of Sidney Poitier, the young playwright has devised a brisk, if occasionally overwrought, account of how the actor faced down pressure to conform during the anti-communist witch hunt of the 1950s.

Ivanno Jeremiah gives us a rangy, self-confident Poitier with a ready smile and the colourful dress sense of a jazz musician. But, we soon discover, there is a shaft of steel beneath the easygoing exterior. Praised for his latest screen role, the rising